Scott Stricklin didn’t fully realize his dream of becoming the coach of his alma mater until he was on his way to his interview at Kent State.
Stricklin, a 1990 Athens High School graduate, led the Golden Flashes to the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. and became the first coach to lead a Mid-American Conference school to the CWS since Ron Oestrike with Eastern Michigan in 1976.
“It’s really hard to put into words what it meant to all of us as a coaching staff,” Stricklin said. “For the team and the coaching staff, the enjoyment that we got out of that two-week run and to make it to Omaha was a thrilling experience.”
But Stricklin didn’t suddenly become the coach of Kent State overnight. It was a long and arduous road that began in Athens.
He grew up in a small neighborhood with his parents and brother. His father and mother were teachers at Nelsonville-York High School and Athens Junior High School respectively. They provided him with a great family life. His older brother roughed him up and a neighborhood full of athletes helped mold him into a competitor.
“It was important having an older brother to compete with and keep up with,” Stricklin said. “Cory Corrigan was one of the best athletes to come out of Athens High School and he was my next-door neighbor. So every single day we were competing at something. That’s where it all started for all of us, the neighborhood where we grew up in.”
Stricklin was an exceptional athlete in his own right, captaining the basketball team, quarterbacking the football team and playing catcher, shortstop and pitcher for the baseball team. But he wasn’t the only major athlete at Athens High School. Five players from his 1990 State Championship team played baseball at Division I schools. But it was Stricklin who stood out to his former baseball coach Fred Gibson.
“We haven’t really had someone to be as good as him since (he graduated),” Gibson said. “He was a catcher for the 15-U All-Star team down here and even then he called the pitches and was the coach on the field.”
Stricklin taught himself how to catch and from then on, Gibson knew he’d be a good ballplayer and possibly even a coach in the future. Though Gibson proved to be correct in the long run, Stricklin made stops on the way.
After lettering in baseball for three years at Kent State, Stricklin was selected in the 23rd round of the 1993 draft by the Minnesota Twins. He played in their system for three years before signing with the Atlanta (AA level) and Tampa Bay (A+) farm systems for one year each. It was the lessons that he learned in the minors that built him into the coach he is today.
“It’s really a test of how you handle adversity because baseball is a game of failure and you have to deal with it,” Stricklin said. “Playing in the minor leagues is not glamorous by any stretch of the imagination. You’re going to fail much more than you succeed, so you have to learn to deal with it.”
But once he retired from the idea of professional baseball, he knew coaching was his calling. After serving as an assistant coach at Georgia Tech, Stricklin received the chance to live out one of his dreams and coach his alma mater, Kent State. And after living out his dream for the past eight years, he’s looking to continue building on his success. “The experience of Omaha was something that we’ll never forget and it just makes you want to get back there even more,” he said. “We’re working really hard with this team to make it back again."
ch203310@ohiou.edu
