Baseball has been my obsession for my entire life. I was on my home from Newark, Ohio after a summer coaching the Licking County Settlers in the Great Lakes League. We had just lost in the Championship game and the high was starting to come down. I was excited to be with my wife, Taylor, on a mini vacation in Pennsylvania but I couldn’t shake this thought I had in my head. How much longer am I going to be able to chase this dream? I was about to go into year 4 of being a college baseball coach making less than 10K a year. I wanted to start my life with Taylor and I knew I couldn’t do this much longer.

    We were at her family’s lakehouse in Pennsylvania and I was scrolling twitter and ran into a tweet from Tyler Gillum. Tyler is the Head Coach of the Savannah Bananas and I met Tyler through twitter. At the time, Tyler was posting great information on base running and I didn’t know much about that side of the game at the time. I DM’d him asking if we could meet up and luckily enough he said yes. We had a great breakfast and stayed in touch after. So a year later, he tweets out that his buddy is looking for a full-time hitting coach, my heart sank. I told him I was interested and he was excited because he thought I would be a good fit. 

    A few hours later we were out to eat with Taylor’s grandparents and I got a call from Clint Helton, Head Coach at Maryville College. We talked for a while and it was a great conversation. I walked back into the restaurant and asked Taylor…can we go to Tennessee tomorrow? Taylor and I decided to dive right into this opportunity and drive 10 hours to Maryville the next morning. We get to Maryville and stop at Full Service BBQ (sadly now closed) to meet Clint and his assistant, Drew Henry. The food was a great start and now I was ready to see what a D3 school would be all about. I was shocked. Maryville College is beautiful as you already know. Taylor and I had our socks knocked off. We were excited and had a really good feeling about how things were going. Clint had already offered us to stay at his place which was awesome. We hung out the first night and then the next day was the school pig roast. I got a first hand look at how close everyone was at Maryville. We had an amazing time and knew that was going to be our home. 

    I was a first time full-time assistant and Clint was a first time head coach. We worked well together and were excited for our first season together. We had a great team, but I didn’t think we knew how good we were going to be. I’ve written multiple blogs on that season but we went 14-5, had the top offense in the nation and then covid hit. It was a massive blow but having Clint there throughout covid in a town we weren’t too familiar with was huge. When we got back to school it was tough. The covid regulations put a strain on us all. We had a time where things got rough, but grew from it. We went 9-21 but the way we ended the season I’ll never forget. Then last season was a mixture of it all. Going 22-16 but knowing that there was more to come in year 4. 

Then, I got this opportunity to come down to Florida Tech (just a couple weeks ago. After being at Maryville College for 3 years.) I didn’t want to take the job at first because of how much Maryville means to me. We talked about the opportunity in Clint’s office at length, and he told me it makes sense for me to take this opportunity. Not many coaches would allow for this amount of transparency, but he showed that he wanted the best for me everyday so I knew I could talk to him about this. In those 3 years, I learned more about myself than any 3 year span of my life. Clint made me a better version of myself by allowing me to fail and succeed as a coach. He let me make decisions and learn from them. I like to push the boundaries sometimes and a perfect example of this is when I found out about the barefoot movement. Not many coaches would let assistants do crazy stuff like that, but he did. I started this blog talking about how I thought my baseball coaching career may be coming to an end. He kept the dream alive and then he allowed me to flourish professionally and personally by allowing me to be myself. Baseball needs more head coaches like Clint, and I can’t thank him enough for all that he did for me and the Maryville College Baseball Program. The Scots will always hold a special place in my heart…and I’m lucky to have added more people to my family and another place to call home. Maryville is such a special place, and it’s bittersweet to close that chapter. Now, it’s onto the next exciting chapter in Melbourne