At a very young age, growing up where crime was a frequent visitor and strife a neighbor in Wilmington, Aaron Lewis could visualize being in a better place.

A baseball bat and a glove were his armaments to excel and escape.

“I grew up in the city,” Lewis said recently from his Wilmington police department office. “I was around some bad stuff. And baseball actually took me away from that and introduced me to some really good people when I was in high school.”

Now he is among those quality individuals, a former high school and college standout player who has set out to help make baseball as positive an experience and path to prominence for others as it was for him.

That accomplishment will be recognized Feb. 19, when Lewis is presented the Tubby Raymond Award by the Delaware Sportswriters and Broadcasters Association as the state’s 2023 Coach of the Year. The DSBA awards luncheon is at noon on Presidents Day at Riverfront Events.

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Lewis guided Delaware Military Academy, where he has been baseball coach since 2013, to its second state title in three years last spring.

DMA has gone 65-10 the last three years and 128-53 in 10 years under Lewis. He’s the only Black coach to win a state baseball title.

“Aaron has a passion for coaching,” said Jeremy Jeanne, the DMA athletic director. “He has a unique way to get his players to connect with him.

“He is what I call ‘a transformational coach.’ He demands excellence and his players simply work hard not just for each other but for him to reach this level of excellence that’s demanded of them. He has found his calling in life, which is to coach young adults the game of baseball and help them mature and develop into great contributors of our society.”

Giving back to the community through baseball

Lewis is the first baseball coach to win the Raymond award, which has been presented annually since 2000. It is named after its first recipient, the long-time Delaware coach and College Football Hall of Famer.

“I feel like myself and my coaching staff, we relate to the kids well,” Lewis said. “But we also are the types of coaches that hold them accountable for things that they're not supposed to do on or off the field.

“We're the first people to let them know when they're wrong, but we're also the first people to pat them on their backs. We demand respect from the kids, but they also know we're like them, we like to have fun, too.”

Lewis had a prolific playing career, making first-team All-State as an outfielder three times before graduating from St. Elizabeth in 2000. He then starred at nearby Cecil County Community College and Wilmington University.

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It was at Cecil where Lewis would observe what coaches were doing in an effort to begin learning the trade.

“It kind of started my sophomore year in college,” Lewis said. “When I was in the outfield, I was always focusing on what Brian [August, then a Cecil assistant, now Wilmington’s coach] was doing with the infield. Just trying to be like a sponge more than anything, soaking in all the information, everything that he was doing with those guys, watching the drills that he would run.”

After graduating from Wilmington in 2005, Lewis joined his former St. Elizabeth coach Tom Beddow on the Vikings’ staff. He had to take a year off from coaching after becoming a Wilmington police patrolman. Lewis then returned to St. E and coached on the William Penn staff before becoming DMA head coach.

Police duty also a dream job

Before he wanted to be a baseball coach, Lewis also treasured the idea of being a city cop. It had been his career ambition since high school. His upbringing was the inspiration there, too.

Lewis worked a long stint in the police department’s drug unit and is now in his fifth year as an evidence custodian officer in support services.

“I was always the type of person who hated seeing people do well by doing bad things,” said Lewis, now in his 18^th year on the force, referring to illegal activities such as drug dealing that made people money. “That's what made me want to be a police officer. Plus, I love helping people.”

That includes getting his baseball players on the proper path to excel at the sport and, even more importantly, attend college and get a degree. If that includes baseball, even better, as nearly 30 of his former players have been on college teams.

That includes some of last year’s senior standouts such as Tyler August at Delaware, Logan Wiley at UMBC, Drew Simpson at West Chester and Jackson Dorsey at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

A main reason that August. the son of Brian August, went to DMA was so he could play for Lewis.

"At the beginning of each season he would set the expectations for us," Tyler August said, "and we knew we had a job to do. He helped out along the way and pushed us but he let us be ourselves, which is really cool."

DMA opens the 2024 baseball season on March 26 against St. Elizabeth at Canby Park.

“Being around good people took me away from the bad stuff,” Lewis, a husband and father of three, said of baseball’s positive impact on his life. “So that's why I'm so fully invested into helping kids, because if I didn't have this game of baseball, I probably wouldn't be where I am.

"That's why I like to put so much into my kids and I care so much about them in the game and try to teach them life lessons through the game of baseball.”

Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com and our DE Game Day newsletter.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: DMA baseball's Aaron Lewis earns Delaware coach of the year for 2023