CAMDEN – Rich Szvitich has stepped down after eight seasons as Caesar Rodney High’s baseball head coach.

The Riders went 92-61 with four state tournament appearances under Szvitich, who submitted his letter of resignation on Wednesday.

CR has had only two head baseball coaches over the last three decades. John Newman resigned in 2008 after 24 seasons as the Riders’ head coach.

The 50-year-old Szvitich, a former CR player himself, has coached in the program for all but three seasons since 1991. He was an assistant at Delaware State for those other three years.

“I don’t know if everybody would believe it, but I intended this to be my last year coming up,” Szvitich said on Friday. “My wife (Robin) has been a baseball, football, swimming coach’s wife for years and I think it’s time.

“It’s been fun. I’ve been lucky. When I tell people that I work at the school I graduated from, everybody’s like, ‘That’s so cool.’”

Szvitch’s best season came in 2010 when the Riders went 15-6 and reached the state semifinals where they lost to Appoquinimink. That started a string of four straight trips to the state tourney for CR.

The Riders’ 7-11 record this past spring was their first losing campaign under Szvitich.

A match teacher at CR, Szvitich said he plans to go to games and maybe even stay involved in the sport. But he’s looking forward to having the freedom that comes when he doesn’t have the commitment of being a head coach.

Szvitich said he’ll still keep up with the off-season running of the program until a replacement is found.

“It’ll be nice,” he said. “It’s funny because I never had a summer off until I stopped lifeguarding (at Rehoboth Beach). Then, once I had a summer off, I was like, ‘Oh, this is really nice to be able to go play golf and do whatever you want.’”