"Honors"

          Headfirst Baseball Owners, Michael and Mario Iglesias, are teaming up to create their "brand" of teams within the HF organization.  The Bercovich "Honors" teams will be their lane that they will oversee and they will also coach within it.  Five teams of players from 8th grade through Seniors will make up the Bercovich Honors team lane, culminating in those players arriving on a college campus.  

          The "Honors" is really a play on words.  The first concept is that of the high academic and high athletic achiever.  Mario's "Bercovich 35 Honors" teams (consisting of high end student-athletes) over the past few years have seen players move on to schools such as Yale, Princeton, UC San Diego, Santa Clara, Stanford, UC Davis, Hawaii, UNR, Claremont McKenna, Occidental, Chico St, and many more.  The "Honors" title has been well earned in the classroom and on the field by these groups of players.  Players needed a 3.5 GPA or higher and they ended up with a cumulative team GPA of 3.9!   Now the vision of the Honors teams has evolved into a much deeper meaning.  Michael and Mario have decided to truly "honor" a mentor of theirs in a special way by dedicating their lane of teams to their high school coach, Jim Bisenius.  Michael and Mario, who played for Bercovich and Hayward HS, are blending those two experiences into the Honors teams.  "Coach B" (and other coaches like him) have paved the way for this generation of baseball and the Honors lane of teams is a tribute to him.

          It is very easy to see why Michael and Mario want to honor their former Hayward High School coach, Jim Bisenius.  Coaches from his time, when high school baseball was pure and absent of much of today's business element, meant a great deal to players.  Coach Bisenius poured himself into his program as he taught and coached at Hayward High School spanning some 25 years, helping countless young players to respect and honor the game of baseball.  He represents a time and type of coach that is not easily found these days at any level, especially in high school.  He devoted time, energy and years of training, preparation and experience to all of his players before the era where travel baseball and high school intersected.  The purity of the high school baseball experience was special and Coach B went above and beyond for his players.  He was instrumental in Michael signing with the Dodgers and Mario signing with Stanford.  He attended the Area Code Games with the Iglesias family and he became like family along with his amazing wife, Helen.  Years later, somewhere in the middle of the South of our country, as Mario warmed up in the bullpen before a minor league start, he heard a familiar voice... of course it was Coach B who showed up to express his support, love and connection to one of his many grateful players!  As a thank you to Jim Bisenius, Michael and Mario have chosen the "H" of the classic Hayward HS Baseball Cap as the inspiration of the cap for those on the Bercovich Honors teams.