Who ETSU Should and Is Considering To Be Their Next Baseball Coach
East Tennessee State athletic director Richard Sander has outdone himself in his previous coaching hires. Now he must make another with head baseball coach Tony Skole departing for The Citadel.
It’s commonplace for fans, especially in the Tri-Cities, to start looking at the best available local to fit the bill (“TODD HELTON SHOULD COACH THE VOLS!!!!”), and there is a rumor going around Ray Smith, the manager of the Elizabethton Twins and athletic director at Milligan, is a candidate.
With the precarious state of the Twins in Elizabethton that’s intriguing. One could do worse than a former major leaguer with local ties who also speaks of the area much higher than his native San Diego.
Unfortunately Milligan usually loses more than they win.
Get Marky Billson’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
One candidate Sander should consider is Jim Toman, late of Liberty, who is familiar with the area from recruiting for the Flames as well as South Carolina, where he helped Ray Tanner turn the Gamecocks into a national power. Toman has the personality to win people over and is in need of a job. He never had a losing season at Liberty.
Besides, with Toman’s affinity for wearing bow ties he should go over well with ETSU President Brian Noland.
ETSU hasn’t hired a baseball coach since the 1990s, but when they did Ken Campbell came from a Florida high school and Skole came from Division II Lincoln Memorial. Reports ETSU was playing with depleted scholarships last year are not true. So while the ETSU job isn’t going to pay extraordinarily well by college coaching standards (Skole made $88,000 last year, compared to the $493,000 Tony Vitello will earn at Tennessee next season), it is in a place now where they can attempt to lure a coach with a Division I background.
Sander said on my radio show, Tri-Cities Sports NOW, he will not use a search firm and will use his own contacts to conduct a national search, though he did not rule out Skole’s former assistants, most notably pitching coach Chris Gordon, as successors.
Marky Billson hosts Tri-Cities Sports NOW every weekday from 12–2 p.m. on 1420 NBC Sports Radio Tri-Cities. Follow 1420 NBC on Facebook & Twitter & listen on IHeartRadio.
�R��N��*TdU�_
