Olejniczak says he'll return to coach next season

You can't get rid of him, yet. Not that you ever wanted to.

Decorah baseball coach Dennis Olejniczak said despite being 72 and having a heart scare over the weekend, he'll be back in the dugout next season. It'll be the 47th for Coach O, who is second all-time nationally with 1,221 career prep victories.

"At Decorah, it's still Mr. O or Coach O. It's just a great feeling to have that," said Olejniczak, with wife, Paula, standing nearby. Paula Olejniczak has been the scorekeeper for all of her husband's games.

"I hate to lose. And it's still great to be around young people," Coach Olejniczak said. "These kids can handle someone getting in their face. It's not quite like the olden days where I could really get in their face and they believe every word (I said). These kids believe maybe 90 percent of what I tell them. They don't quite believe in everything.

"But they're still proving to be good, young adults and they carry away from our baseball program what's most important. That's that they can live a stable life, be a good partner with a spouse, a great leader for their kids, a help in their community. Our team is about service to each other, not about ourself."

Olejniczak was forced to the hospital Sunday after not feeling well, where he was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat. Doctors gave him medication and said he could travel to Des Moines with his team for its Class 3A state tournament quarterfinal Tuesday against Norwalk.

More heart tests are scheduled next week.

"They've got a lot of it figured out," Olejniczak said. "Saying that, I'll probably fall over right now from fuzziness. But I feel fine ... I don't understand it all. All I know is I'm going to a couple of (Major League) games in the next week down in Kansas City and St. Louis."

And he'll be back in the third-base coaching box come next May.

"I wouldn't trade it for anything," Olejniczak told a pack of reporters. "Even you guys, you look like you're having fun. That's what baseball should be. It should be fun, it shouldn't be work."