JAMESTOWN – The Jamestown High School boys baseball team will enter the 2025 season with a new face at the helm: Tim Ranum.
“I love baseball,” Ranum said. “I love teaching it. I think it’s a great way to teach kids about life and educate them. I just want to make Jamestown a strong baseball program that will benefit the kids not only in high school but also in summer baseball. So I’m excited about the future of Jamestown baseball.”
The former head coach of the Carrington American Legion baseball team was hired to replace the outgoing Jack Bowman.
Bowman told Ranum during last baseball season that he would retire at the end of the season. Ranum said he applied for the job the first day the position was posted.
“It was good,” Ranum said of the interview. “… (High school athletic director) Jim (Roaldson) and I have known each other for a long time. I even coached against him, he helped with the Legion program here and when I was at Carrington. I think he’s aware of some of the things I do as a coach. It’s just nice to have a good conversation about baseball and how I could ultimately be a successful coach here at Jamestown.”
In addition to his role as the Blue Jays’ head baseball coach, Ranum has also been hired as the Blue Jays’ boys tennis coach this fall. The Blue Jays are 1-2 after their first meeting on August 23-24.
“It was fun,” Ranum said. “It was great, a good learning experience. You get to see a sport that I’m not particularly familiar with the organization of. It’s really interesting to learn the strategy component. Luckily, I have a really great coaching staff with some volunteers who gave me a crash course on the game. … It’s about making adjustments as you go. I think my goal as a tennis coach here is to make sure things are organized and structured. I feel like I’ve set a pretty good precedent for what I’d like to see.”
Although baseball season is still a long way off, Ranum is already planning to build a successful team.
“I expect us to go to the state championships every year and compete for them,” Ranum said. “…We were pretty young last year and we’re going to have a good senior class and a rising sophomore class that has experience at the college level, especially… a lot of experienced kids coming back. I think we’re going to be a force out west… my mantra is kind of that we’re always going to be good, strong competition from here on out.”
Ranum left his position at Carrington High School in 2023 and was hired as an English teacher at Jamestown High School for the 2023-24 school year. During his freshman year at JHS, Ranum was an assistant coach for the Jays’ baseball and boys basketball teams. Ranum said he will return to the basketball team in the winter.
Ranum said he learned a lot from training with Wayne Shipman at Carrington and with Bowman.
“It was a good opportunity to step back and learn, and I think that’s what ultimately made me want to run my own team again,” Ranum said. “Last year was nice too. I don’t know how to handle 45 kids in a program, that would have been new to me, and it was nice to see how a Class A baseball program works. Now I feel a lot more comfortable being able to take the lead.”
Ranum said the lack of players in Class B meant he had to work with the players and resources he had at his disposal and that the constant between the two levels was skill development.
“You try to develop the skills of the athletes, but it’s harder to give each individual athlete the same amount of time as you might in Class B because the kids here have spent a lot of time offseason and there are a lot of kids in Jamestown who are just working on their game,” Ranum said.
Ranum takes over a program that went 9-14 last season. Ranum said he wants his team to find ways to get on base and play “small ball” to win games and score points.
“I think we need to get better defensively and really build a pitching staff that will attack hitters and throw strikes and allow our defense to make plays,” Ranum said. “I think every coach wants their team to play solid fundamentally, but we need to prevent guys from getting on base through walks and errors and force teams to hit the ball around in the yard. … We have good, athletic guys and putting together an athletic defense is something I’m going to be proud of. On offense, it would be great if we had a lot of hitters that could get on base and wreak havoc there.”
Hello,
My name is Max O’Neill. I’m a sports reporter for The Jamestown Sun. I’m a native New Yorker and a 2020 graduate of Ithaca College with a degree in television and radio.
