Overcoming Adversity: MS Victim Realizes Dream of Coaching Baseball

Houston County High School’s baseball team hasn’t hit a lucky streak in Bill Lovrich’s first season at the school. But the coach tells himself wins will come.
He also knows the mere fact that he’s back on the baseball field is a victory itself.
The 34-year-old Lovrich has multiple sclerosis.
“Every morning, I wake up and check to see if my eyes open and if my hands work,” he said. “If they work, I say, ‘Thank goodness. The day’s going to be good.’
“Every day is an adventure.”
But the days are also often long. His wife Annette said Lovrich usually gets out of bed at 5:10 a.m., leaves their home near Wicksburg at 6:20 for work in Columbia, and there are nights he doesn’t get in until after 11:30 p.m. He also must give himself injections of Betaseron every other day.
Lovrich played baseball at Jacksonville State University and comes from a family of baseball coaches. His father Frank, a former vice president of Troy State University at Dothan, was also head coach at JSU. His brother Marty is an assistant at Auburn University at Montgomery.
About one-third of Americans, including comedian Richard Pryor, have been diagnosed with MS. Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, often disabling disease of the central nervous system, according to the Multiple Sclerosis Society Alabama Chapter in Birmingham.
Symptoms may be mild, such as numbness in the limbs, or severe, causing paralysis or loss of vision. Most people are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40.
The diagnosis was tough for Lovrich’s family, especially his brother and his wife. But it as Annette Lovrich who helped bring her husband out and take a positive attitude toward his disease.
“I was driving my family crazy,” he said. “She was the one who helped bring me out of my depression.”
“He went through almost a three-year period of really being negative,” Annette said. “Basically, I just told him I wasn’t going to let it control my life, and he needed to take a different outlook.
“He had to have adequate time to go through all those emotions to deal with it. But there also comes a time when enough is enough. After all of the changes in our lives from the time he began teaching and coaching, he’s gotten back to being more of the person I originally got to know.”
Lovrich’s problems began in October 1995 when he felt numbness in his left arm while working on the Cubmobile Derby for the recreation department. By the next morning, the sensation had spread across his chest and back, and he thought he might be suffering a heart attack or stroke.
Doctors first thought it might be a pinched nerve, then maybe carpal tunnel syndrome, but the symptoms worsened as the couple was on the way to spend Christmas with Annette’s family in Boone, N.C.
Neurologist Dr. Alan Prince was the first to mention MS, and the diagnosis was confirmed by Dr. John Whitaker at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Kirklin Clinic.
“I didn’t know what my future was,” Lovrich said. “I thought I might be in a wheelchair. I certainly never thought I’d be coaching again.”
 Although Lovrich feels fortunate to have the relapse remitting form of the disease (meaning the symptoms go from active to dormant), his diagnosis eight years ago forced him into a career change. He had to give up his job in the recreation department, which demanded he spend much of the day in the heat, and decided he wanted to teach.
So Lovrich went to Montgomery and shared an apartment with his brother while he worked as an AUM baseball assistant coach and earned his master’s degree in 1996.
“That was when he became like a big brother to me,” Lovrich said.
He first landed substitute teaching jobs in Headland and Enterprise before he took a teacher-coach position at New Brockton. There, he led the Gamecocks to its first winning season in its baseball history. He moved on to Columbia last year.
Lovrich describes himself as an intense coach. In his first year at Houston County, the team defeated Ashford for the first time in several years, although the season has gone somewhat sour since.
But Lovrich is learning to keep the game in perspective. The past couple of years have taught him that.
“I like to let the team know it’s not life or death,” he said. “There was a time when I was playing when I thought the game was life or death and had to learn it’s just fun.
“When you’re young and an athlete, you think your body’s going to last forever. Now I listen when my body tells me it’s time to slow down. Even though I’m pretty healthy, I know something can go wrong at any time. It’s like a time bomb – you just don’t know when it will happen.
“So I want to be positive, upbeat and be the best teacher, coach and husband I can be.”