Baseball win No. 1 vs. Alton gives Wheaton win No. 97 as Roxana coach

The countdown to 100 career victories for Roxana Shells baseball coach Jerry Wheaton should reach its target sometime next week.

And when that milestone comes, with three more wins, Wheaton will give thanks to former Roxana graduate and former Roxana coach Scott Harper.

"The success I've had as a head coach, I put so much on Scott Harper and the five years I was his assistant," Wheaton said earlier this season. "The ins and outs and the intricate things with managing a baseball game, I learned a lot from Scott Harper. That guy, he's a professional when it comes to this."

The profession took Harper to the Alton Redbirds and Wheaton stepped up to take over as Shells varsity coach in 2019.

And since Alton and Roxana renewed their baseball relationship in 2021 - after last meeting in 2013 - Wheaton's march to 100 wins had received zero help from his mentor and the Redbirds, until Wednesday.

The Shells drew off from a 1-1 tie with four runs in the fourth inning and piled on with five more runs in the fifth to bury the Redbirds 12-2 in six innings at Roxana Park. The Shells, who had their nine-game winning streak halted with a Cahokia Conference loss at Columbia on Tuesday, improve to 11-2. Alton is 8-8.

It was career win No. 97 for Wheaton and his first after five defeats in matchups with Harper. It was Roxana's first win vs. Alton since Nick Gruver pitched a complete game and had a homer with four RBI in 2004. The Redbirds had won 13 in a row over the Shells from 2005-25.

The 12 runs Roxana put up Wednesday were the most it has scored against Alton since a 14-13 win in 2002 when the Shells got homers from Robert Rahn, Jared Weston and Bryan Cincoski.

The Shells got their first home run of the 2026 season when Max Autery's solo shot to lead off the fourth inning broke a 1-1 tie and triggered the first of back-to-back five-run innings that delivered 11 of Roxana's 16 hits.

The bottom third of the Shells' lineup - Lyndon Thies, Logan Cox and Keelan Crawford - inflicted damage with eight hits, five RBI and six runs scored. Thies had three hits and three RBI, Crawford had three hits and Cox joined Sean Maberry, Mason Crump and Nick Miles with two hits apiece.

Miles started and pitched four innings to earn the win, while allowing one run on four hits, four walks and four strikeouts. Joseph Johnson worked the final two innings to close.

Anderson Kaufmann drove in both of Alton's runs and matched Alex Pilger with two hits. But the Redbirds could not produce enough offense to overcome their six errors making six unearned runs for the Shells. Kaufmann gave only an unearned run and two hits in his three-inning start with four strikeouts and no walks. Donavon Ducey was hit with the loss from two innings of relief.

Both teams were scheduled to return to conference play Thursday, but Alton's Southwestern Conference date at East St. Louis is postponed while Roxana is back home to get another shot at Columbia.

Altamont brings a 9-4 record and six-game winning streak to Roxana on Friday, with the Shells then getting Tuesday-Thursday conference games vs. Breese Central next week.

When victory No. 100 comes for Wheaton, he will become the fourth baseball coach at Roxana to reach that number. The first three - Hall of Fame coaches Charlie Raich, Joe Huff and Mike Arbuthnot - make that an elite club at Roxana.

"When you put it in that company, it's different," said Wheaton, in his eighth year and seventh season as Shells head coach. "I never got to meet coach Raich. I've heard all the wonderful things. Coach Huff, it was my first day coaching JV baseball in spring 2012. This older gentleman walks out on the field, shakes my hand and introduces himself. My assistant, at the time, looked at me and said, you know who that was, right? I was like, no, I have no idea, I'm not from around here. I know about him now. And I know Arb and his success. But to even be in a same category as those guys, my name needs to be at the bottom of the list."

Raich (19 years), Huff (21 years) and Arbuthnot (seven years) covered 47 successive seasons of Shells baseball from 1965-2011. Huff won 293 games, Raich won 187 and Arbuthnot won 112.

"Those other three guys, those are Hall of Fame guys," Wheaton said. "So, it's wild to think about being in any category with three Hall of Famers."

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This story was originally published April 16, 2026 at 6:46 PM.