05/14/2026
âThis is my final year end season wrap and it is a very long read. It has to be long because it doesnât just sum up our season, but it encapsulates an entire decade of excellence within our program. I hope everyone associated with our PSD program enjoys this yearâs season wrap up. Itâs been a pleasure to be able to post these messages over the last ten yearsâ - Dr. Aaron Peters/PSD Assistant Coach 2016-2026
Our PSD Baseball Family:
Over the last eleven years, hundreds of young men have worn the blue and white, but what does it truly mean to put on the Penn State DuBois baseball uniform? The success on the field speaks for itself, but what people don't often realize is that it isn't just about baseball.
It's never just been about fielding ground balls, making plays, and winning championships. The beating heart of our program is family. That's what it really means to put on the uniform. Our PSD family first began in 2015 with four coaches and very few recruits. At that time there hadn't been a varsity baseball program at the campus since 1993.
So whenever the decision was made to restart the program, Athletic Director Ken Nellis was tasked with finding the right coach to lead this brand new team. Ken hired Tom Calliari, but unless you knew Coach Calliari beforehand, very few would have guessed what would happen over the next decade.
Coach Calliari established the standard of excellence for this program at the very first team meeting in the fall of 2015. There were 21 freshman and 2 sophomore transfer players at that meeting, and when they walked out that day, they understood the mission. It didn't matter that they were young. It didn't matter that this was a brand new program, and it didn't matter that we hadn't even held our first practice yet. The expectations were given, and there were no compromises; this team would become a band of brothers. That original team of players would go on to lay the foundation for what would become unprecedented success.
From the beginning, the standard has been the same: know your role, develop your potential to the best of your ability, work on your craft relentlessly, play hard, enjoy the game, and always be a great teammate. Selfishness, complaining, and excuses are never tolerated. Do what is expected of you, pick up your teammates, do the little things correctly, and leave everything you have on the field.
You may lose because you got beaten by a better team, but don't lose because you beat yourselves. It's about us. Stay together. Play the game, not the opponent. Be the best team you can be, because talent alone doesn't win championships. In one run games, the small things win or lose the game. Great pitching and defense beats great hitting. Handle the baseball.
These are just a few of the most important ideas imparted to our players over the seasonsâŚ.
Let's also not forget why players come to the DuBois campus. It's to obtain a Penn State degree and not be another nameless face in the vast crowd at University Park. Students at DuBois get the full campus experience with the small town flavor of our local community. It's one of the reasons why the Penn State DuBois campus has been around since 1935.
The academics here are just as important, even more so than baseball, because baseball careers end at graduation, and thatâs when your career begins. The entire point of college is an education; to make yourself better so that you can provide for yourself and your family. It's about becoming a better man so you can be a better husband and father someday. It's about sacrificing for something bigger than yourself and realizing that what you did wasn't just about winning but that you created friendships that will last a lifetime.
If you were recruited into our program, we believed you were already a high character young man, and being here will make you an even better person. However, if you came here because you only cared about your individual success, your playing time, or your stats, you didn't belong in our program. That's not what we are about.
Each year, our PSD family would grow larger. Parents would get to know other parents, and lifelong friendships would develop with them too. You see this at our games when parents of former players still attend games together.
You may have also noticed this a few weeks ago whenever several dozen baseball alumni returned to campus for Senior Day. These players are now out in the world making a difference, and they're using the lessons they learned in our baseball program. Each of them took time to spend a moment with our current team and talk to them about what it means to be part of this family.
The program is about a 2025 baseball graduate landing his dream job on a big Texas ranch because of the connections our baseball family maintained with a 2016-17 player who works there. That's what family does; they look out for each other. If you played ball here, you are part of the brethren and even if you were never on a team with a player from a different era, all you have to do is reach out to them. If you wore the blue and white jersey, you have hundreds of other men in the world who will always be there for you because "Navy never dies."
There's the green house and its famous garage, the brown house, the senior house, and the freshman house. These are the places where our players live and bond as teammates. Our team Thanksgiving has been a yearly November tradition since the very first season. And one thing is for certain, we always have a team filled with guys who are passionate about hunting and fishing.
Eventually though, players do graduate, and they start their adult lives. Whenever they get married, it is their teammates that are in the wedding party. Whenever we lose a cherished family member of our PSD family, it is our players and coaches that are always there to support them through the grieving process. That's what families do, because they love each other.
The secret to success on the field is family first. That is the exact formula, and our program has proven it year in and year out. The sustained success on the field is unprecedented at our level of college baseball. That's why it hurts so much whenever we come up short in our goals like we did last weekend in the PSUAC tournament, and then this past week at the World Series. We play for each other. We win as a team, and we lose as a team. We hurt because our family members hurt.
Every year, every great team expects to win it all. That's what you play for; to win it all, but the harsh reality is you can't win it every season. Only one team every year can do that, and we've been blessed to be able to have done it four times. We've been even more blessed to be the first modern era USCAA program to three-peat World Series Championships, and win it four times in five years. There was literally a four year period when Penn State DuBois was the defending champion (from 2018-2021). Then in 2023 we started the season at 3-11 and 0-5 in conference. Everyone wrote us off. We all know how 2023 ended, and it provided another valuable lesson; it isn't always about how you start, but how you finish.
There's also five PSUAC Championships in our history as well, the perfect 20-0 conference regular season in 2025, and the fact weâve never had a losing record. There have been numerous All-Americans, Academic All-Americans, Players or Pitchers of the Year as well. While individual accolades aren't the focus of our program, they do deserve to be mentioned because these are honors that are earned and not given.
When you look at the long college baseball season, you spend countless hours practicing, training, recovering, and that's just before the season begins. Our work begins when players step on campus in August with fall baseball. There are the multiple weekly practices, intersquad games, and a few doubleheaders against other colleges over a six week timeframe.
Once fall ball ends in early October, it's straight to the gym for ten weeks of strength and conditioning multiple times per week. There's the 6 am morning workouts to build discipline, the team meetings, the college activities, and the community outreach we do and that's on top of maintaining a full-time academic schedule.
The preseason training starts in January with the Iron Lion fitness challenge, prep work for pitchers, and continued gym workouts. Then the indoor baseball practices roll around at the start of February. That's four long monotonous weeks of practicing inside when all you want to do is get on the field.
On occasion, we get a little nicer February weather, and we can get out on Showers Field, but most of the time preseason work is done inside. Every player and coach counts down the days to our Myrtle Beach trip for the start of the season.
While other college students are enjoying their Spring Break in March, we are out on the field playing baseball. Our players sacrifice their time and other personal interests because it's nothing but non-stop school and baseball for nine long months.
We train together, practice together, and suffer together because the lone wolf starves, but the pack eats. Thatâs what it takes to be great; find other men willing to do what it takes to achieve success and achieve it together. Thatâs exactly what weâve been doing for the last decade.
Then whenever we get back from our southern trip, we hope the Pennsylvania spring weather cooperates, but there's always cancellations from snow, cold, or as was the case this year rain. You have to endure late nights at the ballpark in the cold March and April air because that's what it's like to play college baseball in central Pennsylvania.
There's the long road trips on the bus that can drain you especially after a long home doubleheader the night before. Ask a player how many Luigi's sandwiches they've eaten in their career, and they will laugh on the spot because it's too many to even remember. Alumni may even admit to missing one of those sandwiches from time to time despite having eaten so many during their playing days.
(One more thing about the road trip sandwiches that none of us will ever understandâŚwhen you grab your Italian sandwich out of the cooler and realize that the only condiment in the bag is ketchup! There is nobody in the world who puts ketchup on an Italian sandwich!)
Next up is the grind of the conference schedule which starts in April. Thereâs back to back home and away weekend doubleheaders in the PSUAC with a few mid week non-conference games mixed in against tough D3 and D2 opponents as well. Finally the conference playoffs arrive, then the World Series hits town a week after, and in a blink of an eye nine months of relentless effort is over.
Whenever the season ends in a championship, it's the thrill of a lifetime, but when it doesn't, it breaks your heart. This year, our team had a fantastic season finishing at 32-8. There were so many great moments from the first undefeated Myrtle Beach trip, to the stupid baseball games we play to keep ourselves occupied during weather delays, to wondering if the next bus driver is going to take us on an unexpected adventure through a winding country lane or over a steep mountain road at 15mph. It all goes by so very quickly.
When it ends the way it did last night, there is going to be sadness because you know you didn't achieve the biggest goal of them all. In a sense, you feel the hidden pressure of upholding the success of the prior championship teams, and that in addition to letting your teammates down, you let those former players down too. However, those championship winning players of the past would tell our team something like this:
"I know how hard you all worked to achieve the ultimate goal and it didn't work out. It sucks, but the sun still came up this morning, and your parents still love you. I'm extremely proud of how you all carried yourselves in the community, in the classroom, around the campus, and on the field. You've represented that blue and white uniform and upheld the standard of this program. All of you will forever be a part of the tradition and brotherhood of this program. I am proud to call you my brothers."
Losing your grasp of your dream is always hardest for the seniors because they won't get another chance for redemption. We as a coaching staff review how it unfolded so we can learn how to be better next season. We start to anticipate how our team will look next year with all the returning players as well as the new recruits when they arrive on campus in August. Next year looks good again for us to be right back in the hunt for another championship.
But that's what makes this year's loss even more gut-wrenching. We all know this is the end. A year ago, it was decided that our campus along with six other Penn State branch campuses will be closing after the 2026-2027 year.
As a coaching staff, we knew this season would likely be the last since the school was selected to be closed for good. We also made a realistic assessment as to whether it would be feasible to continue the baseball program in 2027, and it was decided it would be best moving forward for this season to be our last.
It would give our players with remaining eligibility time to find additional options for next year as well as for their ongoing college education. It was a hard call to make, but it was the right thing to do. One of life's most difficult lessons is learning to control what you can and understand what you cannot. And when you consider it, most of life is not in your control.
We can control what we think, what we say, and how we respond. We can control what's in our hearts and how we express it. We can choose to be angry and resentful for the decision to close our campus, or we can choose to not harden our hearts because of the decision of others.
It serves us no purpose to hold anger within us. What serves us best is to forgive, move forward with optimism, and to keep our hearts open to love, goodness, and what is right in this life. Our team is built this way. Our players are tough physically and mentally. There's not a single one of us that will crumble at the weight of this school closure.
In fact, the best thing each player can do is go succeed elsewhere. Take all of the lessons and experiences you've learned from our program and go lead your next team wherever you may end up. Everything you've been through this year and everything you've learned will serve you well.
Continue being the best teammate and the best version of yourself that you can be wherever the next stage of your journey takes you. Always move forward with courage and conviction that your time here has made a lasting impression on your life, and that no matter where you go you have a coaching staff, teammates, and the entirety of the Penn State DuBois baseball community in your corner for the rest of your lives. We are only a phone call away whenever you need us.
Lastly, there's one more thing that is of utmost importance to understand about our program. Coach Calliari laid the foundation for this program, but when he made the decision to step away from coaching at the end of 2024, many thought that would mean a drastic change in the culture of our program.
How could there be anyone else that could possibly succeed him? Anybody that would be hired would be coming into a program steeped in tradition and anchored by a standard that would be hard pressed to change. Of all the possibilities, there was really only ever one man who could truly carry on what it means to be a part of this family, and that is Head Coach Garrett Brown.
Coach Brown is one of the original players from the first PSD team. He came to PSD in 2016 not to play baseball but to wrestle, and his goal was to win a national championship in the sport. After getting to the national tournament, Coach Brown was eliminated and failed to reach his goal. You can imagine the hurt and the anguish of training so hard, especially in wrestling with the weight cut, only to fall short of being a champion.
Coach Calliari continued to call Garrett, and finally convinced him to play baseball even though at the time the last thing he was looking for was to be on a baseball field. The two coaches have had a long term relationship ever since Garrett played baseball for Coach Calliari when he was 12 years old. So it was that history that brought Garrett to our program as a player.
During his time as a player, Coach Brown was a star center fielder and was part of two of the four national championship teams as a player. After he graduated, Coach Brown became an assistant on our staff, and was part of two more national championship teams as an assistant coach.
He eventually became the successor to Coach Calliari in 2024, and while he inherited many of the players from Calliari's team, Coach Brown began developing his own team. Coach Brown and Coach Calliari are in so many ways almost the same person in terms of what they preach, how they approach the game, and the way they care about their players.
Sometimes when Coach Brown is speaking to the team and you close your eyes, it sounds exactly like Coach Calliari, but itâs in Coach Brown's voice. If you ever watched each of them give signs when they are coaching third base, they are uncannily similar. They have many of the same mannerisms and say much of the same things about baseball. How could they not be so similar? They have known each other for nearly two decades and have been so close over those years.
But while they are so much alike, there are differences. Coach Brown is his own man, and at times, he gets a little more fired up than Coach Calliari. Coach Brown gives so much from his heart, and he wears his emotions on his sleeve. He loves his players and wants nothing more for them than to succeed.
He's a fighter and as tough as they come, and if he recruited you as a player, he expects you to trust his guidance and become a reflection of him. He will push you to the limits, work you to the brink, and will most certainly get after you when you deserve it. That's how he was as a player. That's how he pushed his teammates to greatness, and that's how he coaches his players to this day.
When he tells our players that he always has their backs he isn't speaking metaphorically. He means he would do whatever it takes for each and every player. Now if you understand that about him, then you know how unbelievably fortunate you are to have played for him. Take what he's taught you and never forget that wherever you go, he will always have your back.
If you're a player that had the opportunity to play for both coaches, then you are doubly fortunate to have been coached by two of the finest coaches and men in the game of college baseball. Always remember how these men believed in you and brought you here not just to play ball, but to show you by their examples what it means to be the leaders of men.
People forget that it took Coach Calliari three years to win his first championship. This was Coach Brown's second year, and if it were not for the fact the campus is closing, we would have an incredible group of players coming back next year that now understand what it takes to win a championship. His recruiting class that would be coming in this fall would undoubtedly make the team even better, and you can believe that in the next two years, Penn State DuBois would be back on top of the mountain as champions.
Unfortunately, that won't be how the script goes this time. While we never know for sure what our futures hold, one thing is for sure in this life; when you think the door has been closed, it is often not too far down the road that God opens another one for you. I have no doubt the next chapter for everyone will be incredible. Perhaps the best is yet to come for all of us.
A SPECIAL THANK YOU GOES OUT TO:
To our current coaching staff: Head Coach Garrett Brown. Assistant coaches: Mike Nesbit, Dr. Aaron Peters, Jeff Gasbarre, TJ Gornoti, Cole Slaugenhoup, and PSD Trainer Dave Younkin. Each of you have been a part of this program for so many years, and words cannot express how grateful we are to everything you've contributed to the success of this program. You've fulfilled your roles on this team and have helped to make it everything it is.
To the coachâs spouses and families: we thank you for all of the sacrifices you have made for our program. We as coaches know it hasnât always been easy at times, but none of us could have done what we did without your unwavering love and support.
To all of our former players: we thank you for laying the foundation of this program, for trusting your coaches, your accomplishments, and for being the best teammates anyone could ever hope for.
To our Athletic Director Ken Nellis, we thank you for believing in us and always supporting what we do. (And a great hire of Coach Calliari too way back in 2015!)
To all current and past faculty, staff, and administration of Penn State DuBois, we thank you for educating our players and being there to guide them in their career paths. We wish you all great success in the next phase of your career.
To all of our game day family, Amanda Rosman for all that you do. Todd Orsich for the online coverage of our home games, and to our long-term PA Announcer John Schneider (the Voice of PSD baseball). Your contributions and support have made our players' small college experience an unforgettable part of their time here.
To On Deck and Matt Checchio for making your facility the official indoor training location for PSD baseball. It would have been impossible for us to properly prepare for our season without On Deck.
To all of the parents: thank you for trusting our coaching staff with your son and knowing that we always did what was best for your son, not just for baseball, but for his long-term future.
To the fans: We have the most amazing fan base, and we love nothing more than seeing Showers Field packed with those who love our program.
We are so grateful to have had Showers Field as our home stadium all these years. To all those who serve behind the scenes who never get mentioned, your dedication to making Showers Field "The Home of Champions and Penn State DuBois baseball" has been immeasurable.
And to Chris Wechtenhiser and Zak Lantz of the Courier Express for all your coverage of our team over the years. It was great to have Chris cover us yesterday one last time, and we greatly appreciate it!
And lastly, there are so many other people that have been on this journey with us. It would be difficult to personally thank everyone who's had a hand in our success. There have been so many who have contributed to our program over ten years, but please know we will always appreciate your support!
I think it is appropriate to close my final ever year-end season wrap up with a quote Coach Nesbit said to our team after last night's game:
"Whenever you think about our season and our program, don't be sad that it's ending, be grateful that it happened."
We will forever be family!
Written By: Dr. Aaron Peters/Assistant Baseball Coach Penn St DuBois 2016-2026
