After his baseball players took the field, coach Sean McKenna took time for a quick stretch before the District 5 Cal Ripken Championship game this past Monday.
“I’ve got butterflies,” he said with a smile, looking down at his feet, then out to the young athletes from Ponte Vedra U 12 A Allstars.
But after a cluster of home runs were hit—two by McKenna’s son Jordan—and the fly balls fielded, the Ponte Vedra team came out victorious over Jacksonville Beach 13-8. The boys are now on their way to the state competition, held the week of July 10 in Jacksonville Beach.
“The little guys did it,” McKenna said.
For the last three years, McKenna, who resides with his family in the Fairfield community of Ponte Vedra Beach, and fellow coach Jim Flood have taken their team to state, and then regional competition in North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama.
Some players have been on the team for those three years, like Jonathan Sherman, an eighth-grader at Palmer Catholic Academy.
When asked what he likes most about having McKenna as a coach, Sherman’s answer was simple—discipline.
“He’s funny and smart, but he gives good discipline,” Sherman said. “He teaches us the mechanics but he also messes around some times.”
It’s that balance of work and play that makes McKenna, 43, able to juggle his time volunteering as a coach and working as president of Camachee Cove Yacht Harbor.
“I just love being with the kids,” he said of time spent on the clay. “My parents were both in education and I like helping kids learn and grow.”
A slugger in high school and then at Flagler College, McKenna passed on his love for baseball to his two sons Jordan, a Landrum eighth-grader and Justin, a senior at Nease.
When the boys are not holding a baseball bat, it’s a fishing pole. The McKennas can often be found casting a line from the harbor dock.
Drawn to the water as a teen growing up in New Hampshire, McKenna worked as a launch driver and a sailing instructor. Racing sailboats was another hobby. So it isn’t surprising that the sea-loving sailor called a boat his home for the last two years of his college career.
“My junior and senior year, there was no dorm space,” he said. “Most guys had condos on the beach, but we had a 32-foot sailboat.”
He laughs when he thinks of how he once lived in the harbor where he now works. Gazing over Camachee’s 300 slips filled with yachts and personal watercraft—McKenna looks happy.
“I love seeing all the different folks and boats from all over the world come here,” he said.
From Mexico, Canada, Bermuda and beyond, the boats make their way to St. Augustine, and McKenna often recognizes boaters from New Hampshire, where he worked at Wentworth by the Sea, a Marriott Hotel & Spa.
Now that he and his wife Leisa have bought a cottage to renovate in Maine, the McKennas will be seeing more of New England, and undoubtedly more of the coastline they love so much.
June 23rd 2008 - 4:21PM