Depleted football team’s coach steps down Clubs turn attention to Ozuna and Yelich
Rod Huggins has stepped down as Village Academy football coach after a winless season in which the Tigers forfeited nearly half their games.
He spent one year with the program, finishing 0-9 with four forfeits because of a lack of available players. Athletic Director Christine Jiggins confirmed that Huggins had stepped down, citing personal reasons.
Huggins was hired in February to replace Don Hanna, who stepped down after eight years as the school’s coach.
After an 0-4 start to the season, the Tigers forfeited their Oct. 6 game against International School of Broward after injuries depleted the team’s already-small roster. At the time, Huggins declined to say how many players were available, but said they “couldn’t play the game with that number.”
The Delray Beach school returned to the field the next week — losing 44-0 to John Carroll Catholic — but that ended up being its final game of the year. The school forfeited its final three games of the season to Glades Day, University School and North Broward Prep.
A former FAU player, Huggins previously had assistant coaching gigs with Calvary Christian and Forest Hill.
Village Academy, which competes in Class 2A, begins its search for the program’s third coach in three seasons. The next coach will need to build the team’s numbers back up after this past season and reinstall the confidence level at a school that reached the playoffs in four of the previous five seasons.
wdusenbury@sun-sentinel .com, Twitter @dusereport
LAKE BUENA VISTA — On the first day of the post-Giancarlo Stanton era, Michael Hill remained a busy man.
Working on about four hours of sleep — he had to get a marathontraining run in, so his alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. — there were plenty of waking hours for Hill, the Marlins’ president of baseball operations, to continue to entertain offers for Miami’s remaining stars.
Dee Gordon is gone. Stanton is gone. And, without coming right out and saying he will send more players packing, Hill more or less acknowledged he and his front-office cohorts aren’t done.
“I’d still categorize this as surveying the marketplace,” Hill said. “That’s probably the fairest way to assess it.
“You take a step back, after Gordon, after Stanton and you look at where your club is and if there may be further opportunity out there to continue to try to add depth, or make value deals or deals that make sense for the organization in the long term.”
The names that attracted the most buzz Tuesday at the Walt Disney World Swan & Dolphin Resort, the cite of the Winter Meetings this week, were Marcell Ozuna and Christian Yelich.
Ozuna, projected to make about $11 million in arbitration in 2018, will be eligible for free agency after the 2019 season.
Yelich has four years at $43.25 million (plus a 2022 team option for $15 million or a $1.25 million buyout) remaining on his contract.
A source familiar with the Marlins’ thinking said Yelich hasn’t been put on the market. That, of course, is subject to change, and it hasn’t stopped clubs from trying.
There is no shortage of suitors for either outfielder. At least a half-dozen teams have interest in Ozuna and about 10 have checked in on Yelich, according to various local and national reports. Among the teams linked to Ozuna: Cardinals, Giants, Rangers, Blue Jays, Rockies. And Yelich: Cardinals, Braves, Giants, Diamondbacks.
USA Today said the Cardinals are the favorite for Ozuna. St. Louis had a deal with the Marlins for Stanton (until Stanton declined to waive his no-trade clause), so it had a jump-start in negotiations in terms of knowing what the Marlins are looking for.
The Marlins, in trades of major league mainstays the past six months, have focused on young arms, which the Cardinals have plenty of. Hill said that’s not necessarily the priority.
“Talent over everything,” Hill said. “That’s the goal, so we need to upgrade and improve our depth across the board. Do we need to add pitching? Yes. But do we need to add talent throughout? Yes. I think it’s more fair to say we need to add talent.”
Hill also re-emphasized the Marlins’ offseason philosophy of change, because what they were doing wasn’t working.
“The status quo is not an option for us,” Hill said. “That’s what we really came to the conclusion of as we had our meetings. We had a tremendous offensive team, but our pitching was not good enough. Our depth was not good enough. We had the reigning MVP, we had Silver Sluggers, we had Gold Glove finalists [and a Gold Glove winner].
“We had all these things and wasn’t good enough.” it