John Foster Takes Over Hampton Bays Baseball Program From Longtime Coach, Mentor Pete Meehan

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Pete Meehan may no longer be the head coach of the Hampton Bays varsity baseball team — he retired from his three-decade long post at the end of the last school year, but with former player and coaching protégé John Foster taking over the program this season, it’s almost like he never left. Foster’s cadence and mannerisms had an uncanny resemblance to Meehan’s at an early-season practice last Thursday, May 6, something Foster surely would take as a compliment, since he revered the former coach so much.

Foster, 37, was involved in Meehan’s career, almost from start to finish in one way, shape or form. He attended Meehan’s baseball and basketball camps as a third grader in the early 1990s, then worked his way up to playing on the varsity baseball team under Meehan for two years, including Foster’s junior year in 2001, when the Baymen won a county title.

More recently, Foster coached the Hampton Bays junior varsity baseball team for a season before getting a teaching job with the Springs School District in East Hampton, where he taught for nine years before coming back home to his alma mater in Hampton Bays to work as a elementary and middle school physical education teacher — and where he was the JV baseball coach under Meehan the past four years.

“We just learned so much from coach,” Foster said during last week’s practice, referring to Meehan. “He’s one of the best baseball coaches on Long Island. For all the years, all the knowledge, but all the stuff he taught, not just baseball, but how to carry yourself, your work ethic and how all of that would pay off. We look up to him. He’s played a huge part in all of our lives, turning us into young gentlemen and men.”

Foster continued to say that he talks to Meehan on a regular basis, and while he may stray away from his former coach’s strategies here and there, their coaching philosophies remain very much the same.

“We believe in so many of the same things,” Foster said. “You can do a little bit of your own thing, but still, you take so much from him because he’s such a good mentor. What’s been nice for me is I’ve been with the program the past couple of years so [the players] know me, I know a lot of them, so it’s been a nice transition. And, of course, I keep in touch with coach all the time, asking him how things are going. I know his heart is always here.

“It’s been a dream to say that I’ve played here, grew up here — this is my hometown — to come back and coach varsity here, it’s just such an honor,” he added. “Very humbled and just very proud to come back to your roots and compete.”

Jordan Adelson, one of the top players for the Baymen this season, having been named in Newsday’s Top 100, has played for both Meehan and Foster in his four years on varsity, and said he definitely sees similarities between the two, but that at the same time, they are each their own person as well.

“A lot of the fundamentals, a lot of the stuff we’ve been working on since we were kids, he’s bringing through, and he’s able to help some of the younger guys a little bit better, and I think that he’s really helping with all of the little things,” he said of Foster. “He’s able to get a lot of those tiny little mannerisms that usually we don’t really see coaches coach that much anymore.

“He really loves the game, he’s always into it, he’s always trying to get us to be better,” Adelson continued. “Every practice, he always says, ‘Let’s work hard, let’s play hard.’ We came here to win, so it’s definitely cool. He’s definitely bringing out a more energetic atmosphere. We’re able to do some competitive things in practice, and it’s pretty fun.”

David Catena is another senior on the varsity baseball team who played for Foster before on the JV baseball team, and also on the varsity golf team, which Foster has been the head coach of for the past few years. What Catena likes most about Foster is that he just wants to see his players succeed in anything they do.

“He’s great, he just wants everyone to succeed in their own way. He doesn’t expect everyone to be amazing, he just wants everyone to get better, no matter what that is. It could be character, physical skills, baseball, golf skills.”

Meehan said he was “blessed” to have not only Foster coach under him the past few years, but John Paga and Robert Pinney as well, the latter of whom is a 2006 graduate of Hampton Bays and continues to be the varsity assistant under Foster. Meehan called Foster a “no brainer, good fit” to take over for him as the varsity baseball coach, but that it won’t be as easy as it was for him when he took over the program nearly 30 years ago. Back then, Meehan said he had enough players to make two separate varsity teams if he had wanted to, and actually had to cut players from the team because numbers were so good. But numbers, for myriad reasons, have dwindled, not just for baseball, but athletics as a whole.

“He’s got his work cut out for him, but he’s been doing Little League clinics, he was always a part of the camp we ran in the summer, so he’s as familiar with Hampton Bays baseball than anyone, and he knows the challenges that he’s in for and is going into it with the right mindset,” Meehan said. “John Foster was at the top of the list to take over because he understands loyalty, commitment, responsibility and sacrifice, and I’ll be rooting hard for him and the Baymen.”