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Oceanside High School graduate signs with Illinois baseball team
Oceanside's Jon Kourie has been playing baseball for as long as he can remember. “I came into my own in that,” Kourie said. “It was just natural.” Now, at 26, he may finally have a shot at the big time. In February, he signed a one-year contract with the Southern Illinois Miners, a minor league Class A independent professional baseball team in Marion, Illinois.
Team Manager Mike Pinto, who signed the rookie player, hasn't even met him yet. After getting a strong referral from one of Kourie's former teammates on the semi-pro Long Island Storm, Pinto began his research, contacting Kourie's old coaches and looking up his stats. He was more than impressed. “They weren't just good numbers,” Pinto explained. “They were dominating numbers.”
Kourie has been making that kind of impression since high school. Andy Morris, his baseball coach at Oceanside High School, praised Kourie's fielding and hitting abilities. Kourie began playing varsity baseball as a sophomore at OHS in 2000 – the year the team won its first and only state championship. The following year, the team won the county championship, and Kourie won the John Cody award, given to the county's playoff MVP. In his senior year, he won all county accolades. Morris said Kourie led the team in home runs all three years. “Jon was just one of the finest athletes we've ever had play in Oceanside,” he said.
Kourie graduated with a strong record, and received a scholarship to attend Briarcliffe College, which at the time was ranked fourth in the U.S. Collegiate Athletic Association. He was excited about the upcoming season, but had some bad luck in his first year. The coach who had recruited him was fired, and Kourie ended up red-shirting his first season due to a hamstring injury. At the beginning of his second year at Briarcliff, the team got another new coach – the third in two years. But Kourie played his hardest and rose to the top once again. He was offered a full scholarship to attend Texas A & M University in Corpus Christi, and accepted the offer.
