The high school varsity baseball team has hired a new coach who retired from coaching another local team four years ago.

The team will receive new coach, Chuck Gandolfi, retired teacher from Carmel Catholic High School, this year due to the previous coach, Gary Simon,’s retirement from the team. Gandolfi coached for twenty-one years at Carmel Catholic High School and Round Lake High School before retiring in 2011 and was admitted into the Illinois Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame in 2005.

“My [sons] played at Mundelein so I’m very familiar with the last four years of playing against the very good team [Lake Zurich] and coaching against them for many years,” Gandolfi said. “I’m pretty familiar with the quality of the players and the workers who’ve been involved with the Lake Zurich program”.

Varsity players look forward to having Gandolfi as a coach.

“[Gandolfi] will definitely push us harder. He knows how to win and he is in the baseball coaches hall of fame, so he’s definitely got a good track record,” said Danny Neises, senior and varsity baseball player.

Gandolfi received this award in 2007 during his time coaching the Carmel Catholic baseball team. Every year, two to six coaches are inducted into the the association.

“I’ve been coaching for a long time, and we’ve done well. My players and the coaches that I’ve had under me have done really good job for me so it was a shared effort. It’s a great honor for me to be in the Hall of Fame,” Gandolfi said.

Gandolfi said he was enjoying watching his sons play baseball collegiately before the job at the high school’s baseball department was offered to him.

“When I presented the opportunity to take this job, my boys 100% wanted me to do it. They know how I am. I go at things one hundred percent,” Gandolfi said.

Previous coach, Gary Simon, left the varsity team after over thirty seasons with the bears’ team.

“I loved coach Simon. It’s different when you’re playing for him. Practices can go long, they can be brutal and all that, but I would do anything to have one more game with him. He was just such a great coach and such a great person,” said Neises.

Along with the excitement of having a new coach, Gandolfi’s future players also have some concerns.

“[Lake Zurich] has had the old coach for so many years, it will be interesting having a new person try to teach them,” Said Kyle Bajor, Freshman, who knew Coach Simon from previous baseball leagues outside of school.

“It will definitely be an experience, but I think it will be a good one,” said Bajor.