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KOKOMO IS A CITY OF NEARLY 60,000 CITIZENS IN HOWARD COUNTY, and it sits a little over 60 miles north of Indianapolis. Kokomo High School is the only secondary school in the city and boasts an enrollment of more than 1,800 students in grades 9-12.

Indiana is renown nationally for its high school basketball, perhaps a little too romantically at times thanks to the movie “Hoosiers.” The Kokomo HS basketball program has won one state championship (in 1961) and recorded five state runner-up finishes, most recently in 2011.

By contrast, the Wildkats’ baseball program won the one-class IHSAA state championship in 1985 and was the runner-up at the one-class event in 1988 and in class 4A in 2007. Swan feels like it holds its own within the building.

“It’s Indiana, so it’s always going to be a basketball school, but I’d say baseball is right up there with it in terms of the success they’ve had here,” Swan said. “We’ve had multiple kids that have gone on to play collegiately and professionally, so there is a very strong history in regard to the program, long before this group got here, and I got here.”

And there’s more than just baseball and basketball in Wildkat Nation. Perkins and Wade were key performers for the football team in the fall, which finished as the Class 5A state runner-up after dropping a 42-28 decision to Columbus East in the championship game. It was the first time a KHS team had reached a football title game and it brought a lot of excitement to the neighborhood.

“What the football team did this fall was really special for our school,” Root said. “It instilled a lot of school pride, and that was something that hadn’t been taken as seriously as it was this fall. It was really special what they did in that respect.

“It made people at our high school (realize) that special things are going on here, and let’s not look over them and let’s really, really take advantage of the time that we have here.”

Swan likes the fact that quite a few his guys play multiple sports, which, of course, is not to say he won’t welcome the baseball-only guys like Root. He just likes the idea of his players getting direction from coaches other than himself; he likes them hearing different voices.

“In some cases, they may not be the star or the best player on the team like they’d be in baseball, so they have to accept a different role,” he said. “I think that teaches them a lot of things.”

Root is in a unique situation because he can also listen to a different voice: that of his dad. The Houston Astros made Derek Root a fifth-round pick right out of an Ohio high school in the 1993 June Amateur Draft and the left-handed pitcher and first baseman ended up playing parts of seven professional seasons in the minors and independent leagues.

“He’s a really big motivation for me; I credit everything that I have to him,” Root said. “He’s taught me the game front and back. … I feel like I’ve really been groomed to be a baseball player and my dad has been a big part of that. The mental side of baseball is just as big if not bigger than the physical side, and if I didn’t have him I don’t know where I’d even search for that kind of preparation or instruction.”

Scouts will be the first to say that it is the athletic Perkins who shows the most present upside on the team. The Louisville signee carries with him some impressive numbers, like his 4.39 grade-point average, the 95-mph fastball he unleashed at the PG All-American Classic at Petco Park in San Diego last August and the two all-tournament teams and one Top Prospect List citations he’s earned at PG events.

“Jack is a very intense kid,” Swan said. “He’s pretty quiet and low-key if you don’t know him, but he’s got a fire that burns inside of him. He’s very competitive – he holds himself to a very high standard – and I think that sometimes drives him to be as successful as he is …

“He does a lot of the little things behind the scene that doesn’t always show up on people’s radars. He’s just a good, solid kid.”

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WITH THE START OF INDIANA’S HIGH SCHOOL SEASON STILL WEEKS AWAY, Swan will use the time spent during late winter indoor workouts to talk about the expectations that await his players. Those conversations won’t always dwell on what is expected of them on the baseball field, either, but rather what is expected of them away from it.

Once they leave high school and the KHS baseball program, some of them will move on to become ballplayers at the collegiate or professional level; PG ranks Perkins the No. 99 overall (college, juco, high school) prospect in June’s MLB Amateur Draft.

Here in the right now, however, Swan will tell them the importance of keeping their grades up, so they can get into a good college and continue to better themselves academically and socially. From there, they can hope to pursue a satisfying career while also becoming loving husbands and fathers.

“We try to look at the big picture,” he said. “We try to talk to them about being accountable to one another – being a good teammate – and hopefully leaving a little bit of legacy behind for the next group. It’s not just about them, it’s about the program and what they want to leave behind.

“I think if we do the little things … the wins and losses usually take care of themselves. We don’t really try to set too many goals in regard to (the number of wins), we try to be more big-picture.”

Kokomo plays its regular-season games in the competitive 10-team North Central Conference and winning a conference championship – like the Wildkats did last year – is a priority. While the coaches may not talk to the players about winning a certain number of games, scoreboards are still used at all the fields and it is winners that reap the rewards.

It’s going to take a lot of work to get there, to continue the winning ways of a year ago. Despite the sound leadership the seniors are poised to provide, other players will be looking to define their roles early in the season. That process involves the uneasy trick of allowing teenagers to mature into those roles and then get them to understand that there will be some necessary give-and-take along the way.

There is no denying that this is a group of Wildkats that won’t be satisfied with anything less than winning a state championship. It is for that reason the players and coaching staff are embracing the national attention the program is receiving from outlets like Perfect Game.

“I look at it as a reward for the hard work that they’ve put in up to this point,” Swan said. “It’s recognition that people think they see potential in us being one of the better teams in the nation (and) I don’t try to shy away from it. But I also don’t let them rest on that.”

Everyone appears to be ready to take it to the limit this season, to close-out that “unfinished business” to which Root referred. There is a lot of motivation.

“I think about that loss to Zionsville,” Perkins told Dean Hockney from the Sports Journal of Central Indiana during national signing day in November. “It was a big moment for us. We were the favorite to win, and now we have to put it all together as seniors. It is our last chance; we are going to learn from our mistakes.”

Root pointed out that it was he, Perkins and Wade who were presented with some attractive opportunities when they were younger players, and in retrospect they might have taken those opportunities for granted a little bit. Not anymore.

“We would think that if the spring (high school) season doesn’t work out we still have the summer to look forward to,” he told PG. “This year the mindset is completely different because we don’t have anything this summer; we don’t have anything after this.

“This is our last high school season and probably the last time that we’re ever going to play together out on the field. We want to take this last opportunity and do something special with it.”