It’s his first love. Baseball. The love that sprouted at his community church in Hillsboro, Ore., with a memory of him, his dad and brother all playing the sport together, throwing the ball around.
Whiff, the ball would fly — towards dad of course.
“(My dad) would just throw me and my brother whiffle balls and we’d just whack them, and me and my brother used to just try to hit my dad in the head with the whiffle ball. That’s all we’d do,” Jake Hoskins, assistant coach to the Linfield men’s baseball team said.
Hoskins, a Linfield 2024 graduate and infielder, couldn’t stay away from all that Linfield offers — and of course — baseball.
Hoskins passion for playing baseball directly translated into coaching immediately after graduation. Even going through undergrad for a degree in business management, the idea of pursuing a business career never felt right.
“I was gonna go back to Linn-Benton actually and coach,” Hoskins said. “And then Spence asked me, he’s like, ‘Hey, I’d love to have you. I’d give you a couple more dollars and we can make it happen here’ and I was like ‘I’m in.’ So it kind of worked out where yeah, that’s what I want to do, it’s coaching.”
Hoskins originally started his athletic career at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Ore. Like many athletes, the start to their college athletic career is born at the junior college level.
“Linn-Benton was honestly my number one option because they have a good program,” Hoskins said. “It was what I needed for just becoming a better man in the sense of it was hard.”
Early morning conditioning isn’t for the weak, but it pays off when you win the NWAC conference championship.
“I wish I could go back every day,” Hoskins said.
After his two years were up, the pressure to decide to play at the next level was weighing on Hoskins. However, the decision to choose Linfield made the most sense — he’d already been in contact with Linfield during high school, and his older brother Cole Hoskins also played at Linfield for four years.
“I looked up to him growing up,” Jake said. “When he told me that I should come here, I was like, I’m in.”
Cole was captain for his senior year and is still involved with baseball. Neither of the boys’ parents pursued the sport, but that didn’t stop them from supporting their two boys’ play.
Jake played for a handful of clubs in the area, including Diamond Sports, Showtime, Mountain Time and Liberty High School.
“I’m very grateful for all those places too,” Jake said. “They helped me.”
He’s been through it all. The long trips to club tournaments, the excitement of playing high school baseball and the challenges that come with college ball. It’s no surprise that coaching was the next step.
While head coaches get most of the glory, the work assistant coaches do is often overlooked, but important.
“He’s really a rare individual,” Dan Spencer, Linfield’s head baseball coach said. “He was a leader when he played. So the leadership qualities and the work ethic and the discipline are natural for him. So that kind of moved into the (coaching) role.”
Jake still has room to grow.
“He’s working on the ability to evaluate players, the ability to talk on the phone, the ability to talk to moms and dads, the ability to sell Linfield and sell himself and sell the program,” Spencer said.
Maybe Jake’s business degree will come in handy.
Nonetheless, Spencer doesn’t want Jake to stay at Linfield. He knows his time here is only temporary. That’s why he’s making sure he gives him all the tools he needs to make him the most well-rounded coach. Instead of spending time with the infielders, Spencer is making sure that he’s with the outfielders, and eventually in the bullpen with the pitchers.
“The more tools he has in his pocket, the more valuable he is to an organization,” Spencer said. “If he stays with it, if he’s here for three years, he’s gonna have a good feel for everything.”
Jake is also navigating between being a coach and a friend. Having lived with some of the current players last year, it’s natural that the barrier between professionalism and fun can feel a little wonky.
“It was a little weird,” senior third-basemen Nathan Kassler said. “Because I’m like, ‘hey coach,’ is it kind of like, ‘hey Jake,’ you know type thing, and he’s like, ‘don’t call me coach.’ ”
Kassler and Jake lived together last year in the on-campus apartments at Linfield. They are close friends, on and off the field. Now, Jake holds slightly more respect on the team, which can be awkward to navigate when coaching players your own age, and older.
“It was just like guys weren’t giving the respect I think he wanted, or thought he deserved, and I think he deserved respect right out the gate just because he was a great guy here and leader on the team,” Kassler said. “But he kind of put that down pretty early, and everyone respects him well now.”
For Kassler, having Jake back on the team as an assistant coach has been great. They talked about him coming back to coach all spring last year.
But not everything was about baseball between them. They would often get the guys together to go out and play golf and hang out.
“We love golfing,” Kassler said. “Just going golfing was definitely a top fun experience, because we both thought we were really good and that was just not the case.”
As his roommate, Kassler got to see the other side of Jake — the quirky side — the passionate trivia lover side.
“There’s a YouTube video, or like YouTube channel and they do trivia with different professional people or professional athletes, and it’s just like random trivia,” Kassler said. “And he’d have it on every morning … He knew everything sports, like baseball, obviously a ton, but like, football, basketball, all of it. It felt like a sports encyclopedia a little bit.”
Obviously Jake has an immense passion for sports, it only makes sense he’s a coach now. Fingers crossed Jake will be coaching for Oregon State University one day — his dream.
“I think being my age, coming back and being an NCAA coach is pretty unique,” Jake said. “I’m very grateful. I’m just trying to learn as much as I can. That’s really the goal.”
