(Story by Marco Stoovelaar; Photo by Henk Seppen)
 Frank Koene takes over coaching at UVV
Nederlands
 VLEUTEN (Neth.) -
Frank Koene is the new Head Coach of the baseball-team of UVV, which plays in the second highest league ('Overgangsklasse').
Koene was named a week ago and succeeds Orlando Stewart with whom the club had separated.
With this, Koene returns to the field as Head Coach.
He last coached in 2012, when he also led UVV.
,,I have not missed coaching at all in the previous seven years, I liked it'', Frank Koene said to Grand Slam * Stats & News.
,,I've agreed to help UVV in the final weeks of the season and will do the best I can do.
Afterwards, we will sit down to see how things went and to see where we go from there.''
...Frank Koene returned as coach of UVV...
(© Photo: Henk Seppen) |
On Monday, July 15, UVV closed the first half of the regular season with the playing of a make-up game.
A day earlier, UVV became the last team to qualify for the Top-8 Pool.
The champion of this Pool will play a best-of-five Promotion/Relegation Series against the loser of the Play-Downs Final Series between DSS and Silicon Storks.
The winner of this Series will play in the Dutch big league next season.
On July 20-21, UVV had its first two games scheduled in the Top-8 Pool against Amsterdam Pirates 2.
These games were re-scheduled as the site of UVV was unavailable in that weekend due to organization of the Europe/Africa Olympic Qualifying Tournament Softball.
After this weekend, the season in the 'Overgangsklasse' was interrupted for some weeks and resumed on Friday, August 16.
On August 15, two days before the team was to play its first game in the second half of the season, UVV announced that Stewart no longer was leading the team, but that a successor was not yet named.
On the website of UVV, the following was published:
,,On August 17, the team of UVV starts the play-off for the championship in the Overgangsklasse.
Because of the good results in the regular season and the team getting stronger in its last games, UVV looks ahead to this play-offs with a good feeling.
The ambition is to close the play-offs with a best-of-five series against the last placed team from the big league.
With that, UVV already looks ahead to 2020 and continues to do so during the upcoming games.
The Summer-period had been used to finalize some things.
During the Summer-stop, the team has practiced as much as possible, while the ambitions of the players have been compared to those of the club.
Fitting in this is the construction with a strong second team and youth teams with players who will play in the top-teams of UVV in the future.
For the current first team, this means that the sportive ambition is to play at least in the top of the Overgangsklasse or to play for a spot in the big league.
With this, the topsportcolumn within UVV will be used at the utmost and will Utrecht have a topsport-competition, which is also aspired by the Municipality.
In order to achieve the implementations of these objects, UVV believed to end the cooperation with the current coach of the main team.
UVV wants to explicitly state that Orlando Stewart had worked well as coach with the team and with UVV itself.
But considering the future policy and vision of the club (and its players) it is believed to put in a new impetus for the final part of the year and for the future.
At this moment, it is not yet known who the new coach will be.''
Shortly after the statement was published, UVV named Frank Koene as its new Head Coach.
In an interview back then with RTV Utrecht, Koene looked back to the previous years when he was not active as a coach, but instead followed baseball as a spectator.
,,A nice and easy time for myself.
But the call of the baseball-field is stronger than sitting at home.
At UVV, I will start with a lot of pleasure with this challenge.
Especially as UVV has ambitions that fit very well with me.''
Former big league- and National Team-pitcher Orlando Stewart was named Head Coach of UVV at the end of October last year.
At the same time, Marlon Fluonia and Harold Wout were named Assistant Coach.
They remained with the team and now will assist Koene in the remainder of the season.
The 51-year old Frank Koene started coaching after he had retired as a player.
Koene played fourteen seasons in the Dutch big league for Giants Diemen (1984-1987), Almere Giants '24 (1988-1989), New Giants (1989), Kinheim (1990-1994) and HCAW (1996-1998).
Koene made his coaching-debut in 2001 when he was the Assistant Coach of the big league-of HCAW, which then was led by Dave Daniels.
After the season, Koene took over as Head Coach and he led HCAW to third place in the big league with a 29-16-2 record.
In the following Play-Offs, HCAW eliminated Kinheim, but then was swept 3-0 in the Holland Series by Neptunus.
The next three seasons, Frank Koene led the second team of HCAW.
He returned to the big league in 2007 when he was the Head Coach of Hoofddorp Pioniers.
Koene and Pioniers separated in June 2009.
Another comeback in the highest division then followed in 2012 when he led UVV for one season when the team played in the big league.
The team then ended up just short of reaching the Play-Offs and finished in fifth place.
On Saturday, August 17, the first game of UVV against Euro Stars rained out.
The next day, UVV lost 5-3.
On Tuesday, August 19, UVV played its first of the two re-scheduled games against Amsterdam Pirates 2 and won 5-4.
Last weekend, UVV was empty-handed twice against RCH-Pinguïns, losing 6-1 and 8-2.
On Tuesday-evening, the rained out game against Euro Stars was made up and UVV then lost 2-1.
UVV is currently is a tie for sixth place with an 1-4 record.
The Top-8 is led by Euro Stars, followed by RCH-Pinguïns and Kinheim.
(August 28)
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