When Brian Babin accepted the job as head baseball coach at Pope John Paul II five years ago after a long stint at Salmen, he was intent on bringing that winning culture with him.
He needed a core of players to help him do that, and it just so happened that the Jaguars were starting over. Coming off a 2021 season that was chock full of seniors that took the program to places they hadn’t been in quite some time – including a home playoff game for the first time in a quarter-century – Babin was in a place where this would be “his team” from the jump.
Among those players who would help shape a long period of transformation at Pope was an eighth grader named Caden Amie.
At somewhere near 5-foot-nothing, some coaches might have made Amie an afterthought. Babin did the opposite.
Amie started five games on the mound in 2022 and made 10 total appearances. He pitched 30 innings, and although he was 1-6 for a team that went 13-21, it helped prepare him – and the entire team – for what was coming next.
It didn’t matter how old or how big you are: if you fit into the system, that’s all that mattered.
“When I came to Pope, nobody really knew who I was. But I got a chance to pitch my eighth-grade year, and I never really looked back,” Amie said. “I am forever grateful for that. That year changed my pitching career … that was huge to build character and give me a taste of what high-level baseball was.
“Either way, though, if you’re good enough, they’ll find you. It doesn’t matter that we’re a 2A school – we play 5A schools.”
It’s that exact mentality Babin was looking for.
With a majority of underclassmen on the roster in 2023, including a handful of All-Star sophomores – Babin’s son Nate, shortstop Blaze Rodriguez, who currently is playing at Louisiana-Lafayette, catcher Kade Lacoste and others – as a freshman, Amie already had needed experience.
His ERA went from 3.30 to an insane 1.18, and his record flip-flopped to 6-2. The team won 26 games and made it to the Division III select quarterfinals before bowing out to eventual state runner-up Holy Savior Menard.
At the time, Babin called it “probably one of the most memorable seasons in Pope John Paul history and one of the most memorable for me as a coach.”
It would get better. Although they lost in the quarters again the following season, they competed strongly against defending champ St. Charles, winning Game 2 of the series, 2-1.
And if those two seasons were super special, 2025 was one Babin will never forget. Not only was it Nate’s senior season – as well as a host of aforementioned others who helped shape this program’s new future – but brought them back to the glory days of the late 1990s when the school won back-to-back state championships in 1997 and 1998.
Last May, Amie pitched a complete-game one-hit shutout in the quarterfinals against Episcopal in an 8-0 win, and the Jaguars punched their ticket to their first semifinals appearance in 27 years with a 6-1 win the next afternoon.
And while a series loss to University marked the end of the line for a special group of seniors, Amie remains to see if he can push these Jaguars even further.
As of Tuesday afternoon (March 24), they sit sixth in Division III with just six regular-season games left to play. They’re 18-8 and have clinched at least a tie for the District 9-2A title, and can finish off a sweep of league opponents with a win at home Wednesday vs. French Settlement in a game that will be broadcast on VSN.
The team can reflect on their accomplishments later, but Babin knows he has a special one in No. 20 that has stamped his presence in Pope John Paul II history.
“People always say that (Amie) he’s my little pet, but the dude is a video game. You press ‘A,’ to go to the left, and that’s where the ball goes,” Babin said. “He’s an unbelievable kid, unbelievable player, and what goes overlooked is his work ethic. …
“He’s worked his butt off to get where he is, and that’s why he is going to play Division I baseball.”
Amie has committed to play at UNO, and he only has a handful of starts in high school before the next dream will begin.
He defeated Northlake Christian on Monday night to up his record to 6-1, and his ERA now stands at 1.72 this season and 1.52 for his five-year prep career. He needs 28 strikeouts to reach 300 all time.
“It feels like this is all flying by,” he said. “I look at the schedule, and can remember the first scrimmage we had, and now we have just (six) games left (in the regular season). I am trying to slow it down and take each win and each game as it goes and cherish every little moment – every practice and every bus ride.”
Maybe a bus ride to Lake Charles in six weeks or so? Stay tuned.