By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Editor

NORTH SHELBY – When Oak Mountain announced back in June that Derek Irons was going to be the next head baseball coach for the Eagles, it was a sign Oak Mountain is serious about getting it’s baseball team to the next level. Irons came from Charles Henderson High School in Troy, where he went 221-62 over seven seasons, won the 5A state championship in 2013 and 2014, and went 116-17 in his last three seasons as the Trojans’ head coach.

Irons brings his impressive pedigree to an Oak Mountain program that has by no means been bad in recent years, but has labored around .500 and just hasn’t been able to consistently match up with the talent-saturated Birmingham area. From 2011-15, Oak Mountain went 90-82-1, and missed the 2015 playoffs with an 18-16-1 record.

“When you look at the program, I don’t feel like we’re that far away.” Irons said in a Feb. 3 phone interview. “The past few seasons have been good, not bad. They just haven’t been able to get over the hump. But we’re not trying to scrap everything and start from the ground up. We obviously need to move forward and have talked a lot about that.”

What exactly getting “over that hump” in the Birmingham area means is important to understand. At the end of the 2015 regular season, five of the top six teams in the state in 7A were Vestavia, Mountain Brook, Thompson, Hewitt-Trussville and Spain Park. Each of those schools are less than 20 miles from Oak Mountain High School, which gives some perspective to the depth of quality teams in the area.

While that is the case, everything up to this point has been positive for Irons and his new team.

“I’ve been pleased with how things have gone,” Irons said in a Feb. 3 phone interview. “There are challenges being new, we’ve certainly experienced that but I couldn’t have asked for anything better from our guys. They bought in back in August.”

The Eagles will be without Blake Schilleci and Graham Hackbarth in 2016, which will leave holes that need filling. Schilleci was one of the best pitchers in the county a season ago, racking up 70.2 innings of work and finishing with a 1.28 ERA, 68 strikeouts and a 1.18 WHIP while Hackbarth was the Eagles’ third baseman who finished last season with a .304 batting average, 31 hits and 26 RBIs.

Joseph Hartsfield, an All-Shelby County Honorable Mention a season ago at shortstop, is back for his junior year after batting .358 a season ago with 31 hits and an on-base percentage of .412. Hartsfield moonlighted as a pitcher as well, and will see time on the mound along with sophomore Gene Hurst.

When talking about what, exactly, it will take for this Oak Mountain team to take the next step forward; Irons said the answer is pretty simple.

“There’s no magic or mystery to it,” he said. “It’s about dominating the average play on defense, being good at fielding ground balls and making good pitches. And then not giving away at-bats and playing aggressive on offense. Hopefully with the time we’ve had during the fall we have an understanding of whit it will take, where we have to be process-wise to get the outcome we want.”

Oak Mountain kicks off the season with the Briarwood Christian Tournament, which takes place from Feb. 15-18.