Generals tap Palmer as new field manager

  
Story by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net

Ronnie Palmer has built a winner in baseball at the community-college and now Division II college levels. It’s now Palmer’s task to rebuild the Waynesboro Generals after a season that saw the team miss the Valley League playoffs for the first time in three years.

“The history of the Valley League goes without saying with the players that you guys have had in this league. It’s certainly an honor to be a head coach in the league,” said Palmer, 34, the head coach at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins, W.Va., who was named the manager of the Generals on Sept. 29.

Palmer will work for his former college coach, Lawrence Nesselrodt, the director of baseball operations for the Generals and a former Waynesboro manager.

Palmer’s Senators improved from a nine-win season in 2008, his first year at the helm of the program, to 24 wins and an appearance in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference tournament in 2009. His 2007 team at Salem (N.J.) Community College won a conference championship at the tail end of a four-year run that saw the team increase its win total each year.

Palmer is a Davis & Elkins alum, graduating from the school in 1999 after hitting a school-record 16 homers and driving in a school-record 45 runs as a senior. (more…)