CORAOPOLIS — Phil McCarren and the Our Lady of Sacred Heart baseball program have been taking steps.

Now they’re one step from a championship.

McCarren, 36, a 1995 Butler graduate and former baseball and basketball player with the Golden Tornado, is entering his fifth full year as head varsity baseball coach at OLSH.

“I spent six years as an assistant coach there and was interim head coach in 2008,” McCarren said. “We had good teams. We just couldn’t break through.”

OLSH made the WPIAL baseball playoffs each year from 2005 through 2007, but never got past the second round. In 2008, the team fell short of the playoffs.

“I didn’t coach at all in 2009 and the program really struggled,” McCarren said. “The team graduated a bunch of guys the previous year and came back to win only two games.”

McCarren took the head coaching reins full-time in 2010 and the program has been on the rise ever since.

A senior-laden team reached the playoffs in 2010 with a 12-7 record, but finished 7-8 the following year, missing the playoffs by one game.

“That was a rebuilding year, but I could see the talent was there,” McCarren said.

In 2012, OLSH reached the WPIAL semifinals and won a state playoff game for the first time in the program’s history. Last year, the team reached the WPIAL title game for the first time, dropping a 3-2 decision to Western Beaver.

OLSH is 38-11 over the past two springs, including a 15-game win streak last season that saw the Chargers out-score their opposition 190-34.

“We opened the 2012 season in Florida and decided to play in the Ripken Experience (tournament) in Myrtle Beach last year,” McCarren said. “The Ripken games were all played on turf and a lot of the WPIAL playoff games are on turf.

“We thought it’d be beneficial to our players to get some action on turf. It’s a different game. We played some bigger schools in that tournament, too.”

After graduating from Butler in 1995, McCarren attended Duquesne University and walked on the baseball team as an infielder. He spent his spare time as a sophomore andjunior as a volunteer assistant baseball coach at North Allegheny.

During his senior year at Duquesne, McCarren walked on and made the Dukes’ roster again, this time as a pitcher.

“Ed Codi was an assistant coach at North Allegheny back then and he helped get me in there,” McCarren said. “That was an invaluable experience.”

McCarren majored in psychology at Duquesne and earned a masters in theology at the Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. He coached Butler’s freshman baseball team to the section title in 2003 before getting a job at OLSH.

He has been teaching religion at OLSH for 10 years.

“I approached the baseball coach when I first got here and asked if I could help out,” McCarren said. “I’m pretty comfortable here now.”

McCarren lost nine seniors and five starters from this year’s WPIAL runner-up squad. But four starters are returning.

“We’ll have to regroup, but it won’t be rebuilding,” he said. “We’ll be ready to take another shot at it.”