Andrew Woitas, a 2006 graduate of Sleepy Eye St. Mary's, is now an assistant baseball coach at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter.

ST. PETER — In a sense, Andrew Woitas is going back home.

Woitas, a 2006 Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s graduate and 2010 Gustavus Adolphus College grad, took an assistant baseball coaching job at Gustavus under head coach Brad Baker.

Woitas spent the last seven years at Minnetonka High School, where he was an assistant baseball coach. He also coached the Minnesota Blizzard, a traveling baseball team during the summer.

For Woitas, the Gustavus opportunity was too good to turn down.

“I graduated from there, it was arguably the best four years of my life,” he said. “Growing up, being a part of that program, that experience was very valuable in my life and to be able to coach kids, it just seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up. When Brad presented me with that opportunity, there’s a lot of excitement with the baseball program right now — the new field and what’s going on in the future, baseball’s always been something I’ve always been passionate about so do be able to do it on a full-time basis was too good to pass up.”

At Gustavus, Woitas earned MIAC All-Conference honors his senior season after starting all 38 games as an outfielder or pitcher. He batted .406 and led the team with 52 hits, seven doubles, three triples, and 65 total bases. Woitas’ 128 career hits rank 16th in program history and his 141 career games played is 11th all-time.

While at St. Mary’s, he helped the Knights win two state championships in baseball while playing for his dad, Bruce Woitas. His twin brother Alan Woitas is the Activities Director and boys’ basketball coach at New Ulm Cathedral and his dad coaches both baseball and girls’ basketball at St. Mary’s along with serving as the school’s AD.

Right now he’s helping with the fall baseball practices and he’s planning for the spring baseball trip early next year.

“Currently I’m working on our spring break trip down to Tucson [Arizona], we’ll go down to Tucson to play our first games while it’s still snowing here,” Woitas said. “That and ordering apparel and gear and equipment.”

He’ll also have a big role in recruiting. Most important, he’s looking forward to coaching collegiate baseball.

“It’s kind of a dream come true, to grow up loving baseball and to be able to do it on a full-time basis, it’s pretty cool,” he said. “I’m excited to be a part of it, the recruiting aspect is going to be a big part of it, getting back to Southwest Minnesota and leveraging some of those connections I made playing baseball in the area, it’s j­ust going to be a lot of fun. I’m excited to see where this takes me.”