As the Olathe South High School baseball coaching career of Josh Perkins winds down with his final season, he plans to make a dash to the past this weekend.
As a birthday trip with his oldest son, Perkins is heading to Manhattan, Kansas, for the weekend baseball series between the visiting Kansas Jayhawks and Kansas State Wildcats.
Olathe South’s veteran head baseball coach of 16 years will see two of his favorite Falcon alums — Jake English of the Jayhawks and Nick English of the Wildcats—square off against each other.
Senior Jake English, who is KU’s starting catcher, carries a 13-game on-base streak into the weekend as the Jayhawks have won 11 of their last 12 games after Wednesday night’s 8-1 victory over Wichita State.
Meanwhile, Jake’s brother Nick, a freshman at K-State, started in right field for the Wildcats this past Wednesday in a loss against Nebraska.
Like Jake, Nick was a catcher at Olathe South. This year marks the first time in the last eight years someone not named English has been the starting catcher for the Falcons.
“Jake got that started,” said Perkins. “Just a real special family, but Jake is just a tremendous athlete and is really good at everything he does.”
Jake English’s senior season at South was wiped out by the pandemic in 2020. But from his three previous years with the Falcons, English learned what it would take to step up his play in college.
“It got me in the mindset of, ‘I have to go practice every day,” Jake English said this week. “That starts in high school, then in college it’s obviously amplified a little bit more — that grind of being there every single day.”
Before the English brothers, the only freshman to start during the Perkins head coaching tenure was pitcher Isaiah Campbell, now with the Boston Red Sox. Campbell played his college ball at Arkansas and was a second-round draft pick by Seattle in 2019.
Jake English admits he’s hopeful of being picked in this summer’s Major League Baseball draft, but more immediately he’s focused on helping KU reach the NCAA baseball tournament for the first time since 2014.
“It’s super-cool,” he said of the prospects of KU being one of the 64 teams selected to the NCAA baseball tournament.
Individually, the right-handed swinging English leads the Jayhawks in home runs with 12 and RBIs with 43, while batting .324, fifth best on the team. English has already topped his power totals from a year ago when he slugged 10 homers and drove in 22 runs.
“I definitely put on a little bit of weight,” said English, listed at 6-foot-2 and weighing 210. “Not a ton. I think just building more muscle. More than putting on weight, it’s just turning that weight into good weight.”
Brandon English, the father of Jake and Nick, was a Jayhawks catcher in 1994 and ’95. Current Jayhawks coach Dan Fitzgerald is in his second year as the Jayhawks head coach.
“Coming into this year and last year, nobody’s particularly scared to play us with our history,” said Jake English. “I feel like (we’re) using that as a good thing and it’s been really good for us. Hopefully, now in the future with Coach Fitz, people will be scared to come play here.”
Before embarking toward Manhattan this weekend, the Jayhawks had won eight in a row at home. The Jayhawks have four home games left before finishing the regular season at the University of Texas.
Then, at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, the winner of the Big 12 postseason tournament receives the automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
The thought of the NCAA tournament reads good in any language, but in the modern English era at KU and K-State, it has a good ring to it.
