It's not just his propensity for numbers or his background as a math teacher that prompts Whiting baseball coach Kevin Lenz to keep voluminous statistics.

"Part of the reason I go back to 1971 is to show what Whiting has been, what we're looking at as far as what we're building on," said Lenz, who operates the Web site, oilernine.com. "Part of it's also to show what we've done the last couple years and what we're capable of."

As programs go, the Oilers have typically resided at the low end of the food chain, managing just one winning season (2006) for the span Lenz researched. That Whiting (20-11) broke through to win its first sectional and regional and come one victory shy of the state championship game may not equate with the Cubs ending their postseason drought, but it's enough to earn Lenz the Times Coach of the Year honors.

"As soon as the (tournament) brackets came out, I lined them up all the way to semistate," Lenz said. "To get to that level, especially with a team that had struggled so much in the past, was just incredible. Obviously, it's great for me as a coach. You put the time in and you get rewarded for it. But for Whiting to do something nobody had ever done before (in baseball), that's the satisfying part for me."

Basketball brought Lenz to the Class A school in 1996, when he left Calumet College to be on Bob Buscher's staff. He was the head hoops coach in 2000 when Dirk Flick, Whiting's beloved former principal, called him and Rob Segudovic into his office.

"He told us one of the two of you is going to be the baseball coach," Lenz said. "I didn't know what I was getting myself into."

It wasn't easy, especially given the success Lenz had experienced. He played on Jack Gabor's final four team at Bishop Noll in 1984 and coached on Danny Miller's staff at Highland when it reached the final four in 1991.

But the combination of Lenz and Segudovic, the wrestling coach and a football assistant, gradually generated enough interest in baseball where Whiting was able to field a JV team for the first time in 2005. That same group was the senior class that took the Oilers to new heights this spring.

"'Scoot' and I had a pretty good idea who we needed to get into the program to get to this point," Lenz said. "Knowing kids from (other sports), we knew what buttons to push, how mentally tough they were. The biggest part of our success was starting the JV team. It allowed us to take younger kids and not rush them to the varsity level where they didn't belong. We'd never have a choice."

Lenz knew at least one of them, Brock Vale, was going to be "something special", but he benefitted from not being hustled up to varsity as a ninth-grader. A huge cog in the Oilers' run, Vale finished his career with seven team records.

"The way competition is now, if you want to get to the next level, it's pretty tough unless you have tremendous athletes like Brock, (2006 grad) Matt (Kobli) or Will (Dumezich) who put more time into it," Lenz said. "We knew we had one heck of a team offensively, but what set us apart from years past was our pitching. We really didn't have any dropoff."

In the end, Lenz's only regret was that Flick wasn't there to see it come to fruition, though he sensed Tim Wajvoda's game-winning home run versus Fort Wayne Blackhawk in the semistate may have received a little help from above.

"Dirk was the first one to come up and tell you what a great job you did," Lenz said. "No matter what your record was, he was always there to support us. Wins and losses weren't what was important. You were there to be the coach, to help the kids."