By STEVE KRAH
Andrew Quinn is bringing his baseball knowledge and enthusiasm in Michigantown, Ind., as the new head baseball coach at Clinton Central Junior-Senior High School.
Quinn, who turns 26 in December, was a right-handed pitcher at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., for four years (2014-17) and an assistant coach at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind., for two seasons (2019 and 2020).
He is also a lead instructor at RoundTripper Sports Academy in Westfield, Ind., where he gives pitching and hitting lessons and will coach at 14U Indiana Mustangs travel team next summer.
The IHSAA Limited Contact Period for baseball ended Oct. 17. Quinn worked with a few players each Friday, showing them the fundamentals of playing catch and giving them a chance to field ground balls.
Many players were not available since they were involved in football or others were getting ready for basketball season. The dead period lasts until Dec. 7.
Jeff Pittard, the father of Quinn’s former DePauw teammate, Reid Pittard, has committed as a part-time assistant. Other coaching candidates are being considered.
Quinn says he gets a sense that the Bulldogs will be a senior-heavy team in 2021. Among that group of left-handed pitcher J.T. Holton, an Indiana University Kokomo commit.
The new coach recently reached out to youth leagues in Michigantown and Kirkland to build a relationship with future Clinton Central players.
A full-time substitute teacher at the school, Quinn is looking into getting his transition to teaching license. He earned his DePauw bachelor’s degree in Communications. He also holds a personal trainer certification from the National Academy of Sports Medicine.
A native of Chesterfield, Mo., Quinn played at St. Louis (Mo.) University High, where he was an all-state pitcher as a senior in 2013.
Quinn was brought to DePauw by then-DePauw head coach Jake Martin (head coach at his alma mater, Wabash, since the 2017 season).
“Coach Martin drove all the way from Greencastle to St. Louis to take me and my parents to dinner and drove back in the same day,” says Quinn. “He obviously cared a lot about me and his program.
“He made it very clear about how he wanted to do things.”
As a DePauw Tiger, Quinn took the mound 48 times (24 as a starter). He was honorable mental all-North Coast Athletic Conference as a junior and second team all-NCAC as a senior while also serving as team captain.
During his four years (the last three playing for head coach Blake Allen), DePauw made the NCAA Division III tournament twice and posted the most victories in a four-year record (98) in the history of the program which dates back more than a century.
Allen is a St. Louis native, which helped Quinn relate to the coach.
“He’s super, super passionate,” says Quinn of Allen. “He knows his stuff.”
Allen spent two stints covering five years at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where he learned from highly-respected Commodores head coach Tim Corbin.
“(Allen) got the best out of everybody on the team,” says Quinn. “He was really good at understanding the mental side and getting us to lock into that.”
Allen had DePauw hitters in an attacking mindset and Mike Hammel and Jack Thompson both set the school record for home runs in a single-season at 13 in 2017. The ’17 Tigers hit 46 bombs as a team.
As a college freshman, Quinn took a Baseball History class. He is familiar with the old Polo Grounds in New York, where the dimensions were short down the foul lines and deep to center. He looks at the Clinton Central field and is reminded of that image.
“Our center fielder has to be very quick,” says Quinn. “He’ll have a cover a lot of ground.”
He’ll be asking his pitchers to throw a lot of strikes, keep the pitch count down and work to all parts of the strike zone.
Quinn also plans to take a page out of Hall of Famer Bob Gibson’s book.
“Gibson said that with every pitch, act like you meant it to go there,” says Quinn. “Don’t get frustrated. Get the ball back and get ready for that next pitch.”
Clinton Central is part of the Hoosier Heartland Conference (with Carroll of Flora, Clinton Prairie, Delphi, Eastern of Greentown, Rossville, Sheridan, Taylor and Tri-Central).
HHC teams play each other twice with many home-and-home weekdays series.
The Bulldogs are part of an IHSAA Class 1A sectional grouping with Frontier, Rossville, Sheridan, South Newton and Tri-County. Clinton Central won its lone sectional title in 2005.
Quinn is engaged to DePauw graduate Emily Matthews, who went through the excellerated nursing program at Marian University in Indianapolis. The couple’s wedding is slated for September 2021.
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