Marquette grad a ‘blue-ribbon’ baseball manager in Wisconsin

It appears fate has something special in mind for Haydon Price, as it certainly has up until now and probably will continue to have in the very near future.

Price, who as a senior at Marquette Academy in 2019 helped the baseball team to its first IHSA Class 1A state championship, had since suffered a myriad of injuries trying to maintain his career before kismet led him to what appears to be his niche.

The 24-year-old Ottawa native is now the manager of the Green Bay Blue Ribbons – a college summer league team much like the local Illinois Valley Pistol Shrimp – and his team experienced massive success in his first season.

The Blue Ribbons claimed the championship in the Northeastern Wisconsin Baseball League and were one of just four teams to qualify for the Wisconsin State League 2024 Class 1-A Semi Pro Baseball Championship Tournament.

“The competition in the Wisconsin State League is probably a little stronger, but it’s great competition in both leagues,” Price said before the season-ending tournament. “We’re fairly balanced, but our pitching has been dominating lately with a team ERA less than 3.00. Couple that with an offense that’s been exploding all summer. We don’t hit for a lot of power, but we’re gap to gap hitters and do a great job in situational hitting.

“It’s been a great season so far, and we’re looking forward to finishing strong.”

Price was a four-year varsity player at Marquette High School, helping the team to two Class 1A state trophies – fourth in 2018 and the title in 2019. His Times All-Area first-team and Tri-County all-conference status earned him a shot at college ball, at Marian University in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

But there, injuries plagued him. Price had hernia surgery a month after MA’s title game and was returning to full strength at Marian’s workouts when, while running the bases in a fall game, he felt a stabbing pain in both legs.

Initially, he feared he had torn the hamstrings in both legs at the same time, but it turned out an MRI revealed a torn labrum in both of his hips. He was able to have them surgically repaired – a six-hour procedure that included having his left hip socket repaired and his pelvis shaved down to reconnect it – just as things were opening up after the COVID-19 pandemic.

“All I could do was rest and do physical therapy, but when it was done, I was in the best shape of my life,” Price said. “I was back at school, still wanted to play ball … but in the first practice coming off the injury, I tore a quad muscle clear off the bone.

“It was an unfortunate series of events, but looking back today, I’m thankful those injuries occurred. It gave me a different perspective, on life and on the game, and gave me opportunities I wouldn’t have had.”

While he was completing his degrees in sports and recreation management and later in business administration, he remained with the baseball team, watching the Sabres from the dugout and eventually seeing the game differently, from the coaching angle.

It didn’t take long for him to realize that education had really begun when he was playing for Marquette coach Todd Hopkins.

“The first thing I learned from Hop was to be relentless in anything that you do,” Price said. “That’s what I want our style of baseball to be. If you’d ask anyone up here to pick one word to describe our team, it would be relentless, not giving up, to keep trying. … Our practices are really competitive, just like his. We want everything more.

“The second is his leadership. He’s a different coach. He’s definitely not for everybody, but through playing basketball and baseball under him, his leadership never changed. … Whatever your word is, stick to it. Don’t change it. Trust it.

“I can’t thank him enough.”

Compounding that knowledge at Marian – most importantly, how to handle players at the college level – Price grew enough to impress a fellow Marian rehaber, Anthony Sottile. When Sottile became the manager of the Blue Ribbons in 2021, he asked Price to join his staff.

The two seasons as a coach helped Price take a stronger role in dealing with players so close to his own age that, when Sottile stepped down in September 2023, Price was offered the job.

“I just couldn’t turn it down,” Price said. “It fell into my lap, you might say. That’s why with the injuries and the connections I made, I don’t think this would have happened, but I’m really glad it did.”

For now, Price is living in Oshkosh and works full-time in sales for an electrical distribution company before making the daily hour commute to Green Bay.

The experience has given Price the hope to continue into professional baseball, a thought boosted last December when he was chosen to interview for a scouting position with the Houston Astros. He didn’t get the job, but in January did attend Major League Baseball’s winter meetings in Nashville and, he said, made “tons of connections that helped me understand that I have a shot to make it with a major league club someday.”

“I would love to someday get a call from a college or an indy-ball where I could continue to follow my dream of being a part of a professional organization,” Price said. “Right now, it’s the business thing and the managing thing. I’m definitely busy, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”