Baseball: Oswego East’s Brian Schaeffer, Yorkville’s Tom Cerven both promoted from sophomore to varsity head coaches

Brian Schaeffer welcomed a new addition to his family recently, with an unexpected addition.

He’s a dad now – and a varsity coach.

Two days before Schaeffer’s wife gave birth to their first child, a daughter, Oswego East athletic director Tony Millard called with the news that he was the Wolves’ new varsity baseball coach.

“Pretty exciting,” said the 33-year-old Schaeffer, previously Oswego East’s sophomore coach for four seasons. “Everything happened in one week.”

Schaeffer, a Wheeling native and Illinois Wesleyan graduate who has been with the Wolves’ program for 10 years, takes the reins from Matt Engelhardt, who stepped down after six seasons in the Oswego East dugout.

A social studies teacher and Oswego East Avid coordinator, Schaeffer is a varsity head coach for the first time and one of two new varsity baseball coaches in the area. Yorkville on Monday named Tom Cerven, sophomore coach for the past eight seasons, as head coach.

“In all honesty it was a little bit of a surprise that it happened so soon,” Schaeffer said. “Matt had wanted to stick it out with some of the players, but with the pandemic and everything, he wanted to be with his family and decided it was the right time. He approached me, asked if I’d be interested, thought I’d be a good fit for the position. I didn’t think it would be this quick, wasn’t sure I’d have the opportunity, but I love where the program was headed so I thought I’d go for it.”

While the move comes earlier than expected, Schaeffer said he wanted to coach from the minute he started studying to be a teacher.

He volunteered at Parkside Junior High in Normal while at Illinois Wesleyan. When he graduated, Schaeffer reached out to then-Oswego East baseball coach Jim Vera seeking any opportunities. He went back to Bloomington for a year and coached basketball, and when he was hired back at Oswego East talked to baseball coach Bobby Kaminski about coaching.

“I always wanted to be a basketball or baseball coach. Long-term goal was varsity baseball,” he said.

Indeed, while Schaeffer was a three-sport athlete at Wheeling – golf, baseball and basketball – baseball is in the blood.

“That’s always been my passion,” he said. “I loved baseball growing up, would sit around with my dad, a huge White Sox fan, go to the park as much as possible. I was a multisport athlete but baseball was what I was best at and something I wanted to focus my attention to.”

Schaeffer now turns his attention to continuing to build the Wolves’ program.

“I want to keep the program going in the direction it has the last few years, making strides,” Schaeffer said. “When I started, teams in our conference were always at the top. Oswego East has grown, the talent pool has grown, the community has grown. We have the talent, we want to continue to build on it, continue to create that culture of wanting to win.”

At Yorkville, Cerven takes over after eight seasons as sophomore coach. Before coming to Yorkville, Cerven was an assistant varsity coach at Clinton High School. A Minooka graduate, Cerven played collegiately at Southern Illinois.

“Coach Cerven is looking forward to having an opportunity to lead the program, continue to progress and build on the success that YHS baseball has build over the last decade,” Yorkville athletics said in a statement on Twitter announcing Cerven’s hiring. “In addition, coach Cerven is excited to continue to build strong, lasting relationships with the players, families and the community of Yorkville.”