Travis Sheffield has been around the game of baseball for years and years.
From coaching his sons, Jordan and Justus from little league, as they made their way through middle school, high school and eventually to the MLB, he’s seen his fair share of baseball.
Recently, he accepted the head baseball coaching position at Cascade High School.
“I’m glad Cascade is giving me the opportunity to be the head coach. I’ve been coaching for about a total of 22 years of all levels,” Sheffield said.
In following his sons as they made their way through the various leagues, Sheffield followed his way up to the high school level, before resetting back at the little league level with his youngest son, Jaxon.
When the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the sports world in 2020, Sheffield took another step back and focused more on the one-on-one and developmental side of coaching before standing in as the Webb School’s pitching coach last season.
“I kind of stepped down from coaching right around the COVID time and take another avenue as far as baseball goes and try to get into more of the one-on-one, developmental stuff. Then, coach Scott Hall over at Webb asked if I wanted to come on as a pitching coach, which was right up my alley,” Sheffield said.
While he had a chance to take a head coaching position at the high school level some years ago, the opportunity lined up at Cascade and Sheffield knew coaching the Champions is where he felt like he belonged.
“I turned down another head coaching opportunity five years ago and I told my wife if it ever comes up again, I won’t turn down the next one,” he said.
While his stint with the Champs is his first as a high school head coach, he’s been coaching for well over a decade and his vision for the program is a rather simple one—just win.
While the vision is simple, everything that entails involves a buy-in from the players, coaches and community that he will be working with.
“It’s three letters, one word—win. I just think if you put in the work, put in the time, I believe everything else will take care of itself. There’s a lot of ways to win,” Sheffield said.
“There’s the scoreboard, having one more run than the other team, but if you can win the kids as far as having them buying into what you’re trying to teach, win the community off the field, then I think the winning part on the field is not going to necessarily take care of itself, but it will make it a little easier. And guys start buying in and those one-run games start flipping the other direction.”
That winning mentality begins with the work put in during the offseason.
“Ultimately, we want to win, but we want to do things off the field and behind the scenes, practicing in the facility and putting in those work hours to build that winning mentality,” he said.
Sheffield plans on getting to work right away with the players who won’t be on another Cascade roster this fall.
“I do have a vision for the how the fall goes. A lot of those kids are playing multiple sports, but for the ones not in basketball at that time, we will be having fall workouts. I’m very, very much a proponent of getting your arm carrying in preseason so you can pitch in April and May and still have some life on your fastball,” he said.
While the X’s and O’s of the sport will take a little adjusting to Sheffield’s coaching style, one thing he says he’s excited for is joining the close-knit Cascade community.
“I’ve had people reach out and that was the first thing they told me—it’s a close, tight-knit community. As long as you’re in it for the kids, they’re going to be in it for the program. I will be trying to reach out to the middle school program and keep those kids excited about coming into the high school baseball program,” he said.
“I think it all ties in together. Once you start getting into the community and doing things like that, my visions are huge. It’s my first go around as head coach. I want to do it right and I want to do it big while we’re doing it right, too.”