Baseball has taken Dan Dierdorff to a lot of places during his career.

The former Northeastern High School standout played and excelled in various youth leagues, as well as in high school, in college — both at Frederick County Community College and West Virginia University — and now on the local sandlot circuit with Mount Wolf.

Over all of those years, there have been many, many coaches who have helped Dierdorff achieve success on the baseball diamond. All of that help has definitely not been forgotten by Dierdorff, who is surprisingly still only 26 years old. Since graduating from West Virginia, Dierdorff has coached both at Northeastern as well as a stint at York College.

Now Dierdorff is hoping to expand his growing coaching resume. He recently accepted a position as an assistant coach at Cedar Cliff High School.

“Coach (Scott) Lackey and I had a sit down and we just talked a lot about Cedar Cliff baseball,” Dierdorff said. “We talked about what they have in the program and where they want to go and it was just kind of a perfect situation for me.”

Dierdorff’s jump into the coaching ranks was inspired partly from a book he read that included a snippet of a commencement speech made by a former Navy SEAL at the University of Texas.

“He said that if each of us can touch at least 10 people’s lives, then those people can touch 10 other people’s lives and eventually it would add up to over double the population of the world,” Dierdorff said. “So it’s just me trying to reach out and trying to affect other people’s lives.”

Dierdorff said that his move up I-83 to New Cumberland had nothing to do with the current status of the Northeastern program. Instead it was all about learning and growing as a coach.

And, in his opinion, the best way for him to do that was in a different environment.

“Nothing against Northeastern,” he said. “I’m a Bobcat and I’ll be a Bobcat for life. Having (Northeastern athletic director Bryan) Stephens allow me to come back and be on the staff there was absolutely a tremendous experience.”

Without a realistic opportunity to achieve a pro playing career, especially after tearing his ulnar collateral ligament during an alumni baseball game back at West Virginia last year, Dierdorff turned his focus to coaching. He’s served as a coach for the Northeastern High School baseball team in 2014 as well as in 2016 and 2017. In between those stints was a one-year run at York College in 2015.

Having experienced the coaching spectrum at both the high school and college level, Dierdorff is pretty certain now that the high school level is more ideal for him. While things may change over time, he’s pretty sure at this moment that he’d ultimately like to become the head coach of a high school team sometime down the road.

“Personally I might want to take over a head coaching position somewhere,” he said. “And I think that the high school level is where I want to be at.”

Dierdorff knows that time may ultimately pop up at any moment. It could be a year from now or may be a decade from now. When that time does come, he wants to know that he’s prepared for it as much as possible — a sentiment that many other people at his age may not fully grasp.

“Right now, for me, it’s all about getting the most experience as I possibly can,” he said.

CENTRAL

LEAGUE GAME

Pleasureville downs Dillsburg: At Pleasureville, the home team plated four runs in the bottom of the sixth to take the lead and went on to capture a 6-3 Central League victory over Dillsburg on Wednesday, Aug. 9.

Joe Kroeger led Pleasureville with a double and three RBIs. Also for the Hawks, Devin Dellinger went 1 for 2 with one run scored, while Beau Burris came on in relief of starter Colin Parks to throw 1 2/3 shutout innings to pick up the win.

For Dillsburg, Brandon Glass doubled with two RBIs.

Pleasureville had only three hits, but took advantage of eight walks.

Reach Ryan Vandersloot at sports@yorkdispatch.com.