Oh, Baby! What a Week for Marian Baseball Coach

It was quite a week for Marian Catholic baseball coach Phil Wail.

On Monday, he became a father for the first time, as his wife gave birth to a boy, Alexander.

On Thursday, Wail’s Spartans won their fourth game in four days to claim their first baseball regional title of any kind since 1987.

“I am running on adrenaline right now,” Wail said after his

Marian will play in the state quarterfinals on Monday at either North Central College in Naperville or Benedictine University in Lisle.

Wail had planned to be at the Spartans’ first game of the regional on Monday, but his soon-to-be son had other plans.

“My wife was supposed to be due on July 27, but we had to go in early Monday morning,” Wail said.

Wail missed the Spartans’ wins on Monday and Tuesday.

“I showed up on Wednesday and asked the guys if they wanted me to leave since they won their first two games without me here,” he said with a laugh.

The Spartans pulled off a stunner on Wednesday, as they rallied to upset the regional’s top seed, St. Laurence, by a score of 11-8.

On Thursday, the Spartans jumped out to a 9-3 lead before hanging on for a 9-8 win over the Caravan.

Wail, a 1998 graduate of Marian Catholic, has been at the helm of the Spartans program for four years, and he’s happy to bring success to the program.

“The talent is there,” he said. “It was just a matter of getting the kids to believe, and once they did, we knew we could make some noise.”

Wail hopes the regional title will bring more respect to his program.

“When you talk about some of the top Catholic school programs in the area, we are not up there,” he said. “We have struggled to even get over the .500 mark, even when I played in the ’90’s, so this is a huge steppingstone for this program.”

Wail has yet to take off his hospital bracelet.

“I am not taking this off. It has brought a little bit of luck with how healthy (Alexander) is and how everything else went well,” he said.

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