ASHLAND – One thing that best accentuates the passage of time for a person is becoming a grandparent.
And one of the best baseball programs to stand the test of time has been Ashland University.
It was fitting, then, that the two things intersected before the Eagles played their final home game of the regular season May 4.
For the first time, Ashland head coach John Schaly stood hand-in-hand on the field for the national anthem with two of his four granddaughters.
It was a poignant, reflective moment for the legendary 27th-year AU coach, coming on the last day of one of the best regular seasons in the history of the program he has guided to massive heights.
“Grandchildren change you, especially for a guy having granddaughters,” Schaly said with a smile. “I grew up in a family of four boys.”
Time may always be passing for the coach and his program. But winning, it seems, will never get old for the Eagles.
Ashland, ranked as high as No. 7 in all of Division II this spring, won the Great Midwest Athletic Conference regular season and will carry a 40-13 record into its split Midwest Regional. The tournament begins at 11 a.m. Thursday at top-seeded Saginaw Valley State (39-14), where the fourth-seeded Eagles open with fifth-seeded Northwood (32-21).
The winner of the double-elimination tournament between those three teams will next week face the winner of the double-elimination tournament at the University of Indianapolis featuring the Greyhounds (35-18), Maryville (37-17), Grand Valley State (30-23) and Trevecca Nazarene (32-21).
It marks the 23rd time – 19th under Schaly – that Ashland has made the NCAA Tournament.
The Eagles already have 40 wins for the ninth time in program history. Their 34-6 record through 40 games this spring was their best such start in team history.
“In some ways, I wonder how we’ve done it,” Schaly admitted. “We’ve lost two top pitchers and two top hitters to season-ending injuries.”
“It’s been a total team effort to pick up innings, at-bats, runs and RBIs.”
The Eagles have used 16 different starting pitchers this year and 14 different guys have at least one win.
In 37 years as a college head coach, Schaly said he’s never had a team do that. Most years, he said, he might have eight starters on the mound.
Juniors Marshall Leishman (9-0, 3.69 ERA in 78.0 innings) and Cam Scott (7-0, 2.75, 72.0) have carried the largest load among that group. Critical numbers considering two of the team’s top six pitchers – senior Zac Common and sophomore Wooster product Drew Becker – both were out for the year with injuries before the second week of April.
Meanwhile, the guys Schaly planned to hit No. 2 and No. 3 in his lineup all spring – juniors Sam Witt and Billy Howard – also were both done for the season before the Eagles returned from their annual Florida trip.
Despite all that, Ashland has lost back-to-back games just once. The Eagles have put together win streaks of nine, eight, six and five games.
Their 30th game this season was a 12-11, walk-off win over Mercyhurst in which AU trailed 11-5 at one point.
Their 50th game was a 7-6, walk-off rally in the first game of the GMAC Tournament.
Sophomore right fielder and Wooster product Chris Franks had the game-winning RBI single that night – one of six walk-off wins for the Eagles this year.
“There’s not as much pressure because you know you’ve got a bunch of guys who can step up in big spots and can come through,” said Franks, last year’s GMAC Freshman of the Year who is batting .333 with 66 hits, 46 RBIs and 44 runs in 53 games.
“I think we definitely have higher expectations this year just because of the way we ended the season last year (losing their last seven games, including two in both the GMAC and regional tournaments). We obviously don’t want to do that again, so we just expect to succeed in the big spots.”
The 2022 Eagles had one of the biggest senior classes Schaly has led, going 35-21 with an 0-2 finish in the NCAA Tournament.
Last year’s team, meanwhile, was the youngest the coach said he’s ever had, but it found a way to navigate its way back to the regionals after a 33-14 start to the season.
That set the stage for what the Eagles have been able to do this spring, making it three straight trips to the NCAA Tournament for Ashland for the first time since AU made four in a row from 2006 to 2009.
“I’ve never been on a team where all the guys are this close, because we’ve been playing with each other for a while now,” junior center fielder and leadoff hitter Cam Miller said. “It’s really fun to be a part of.
“The culture we have here, everyone’s bought-in right now.”
Miller has team-high totals in runs (62), doubles (16), triples (4), steals (18) and on-base percentage (.469). He was an All-GMAC first-team pick alongside Leishman, Scott and junior third baseman Jeremiah Cangelosi (.379 average, 45 RBIs, 43 runs).
“In any game that we’re down,” Miller said, “in the back of my head I’m like, ‘We’re gonna win, it’s just a matter of time.’”
That never-say-die approach has been a characteristic the Eagles have carried for decades now with Schaly at the helm. And while it seems like almost all of his seasons at AU have had some kind of milestone, this one has boasted some big ones.
He is the active leader for Division II baseball in career wins (1,312) and is tied with Stetson University’s Pete Dunn for 26th on the NCAA all-divisions wins list.
On March 20, Schaly logged his 2,000th career game as a college baseball coach.
He was named the GMAC Coach of the Year for the first time since Ashland joined the league in 2022 (after winning the honor seven times as a former member of the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference).
The boxes keep getting checked for the coach who was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2018 – to no surprise of his players.
“That dude knows everything,” Miller said of Schaly. “I always say, if you play baseball here, you’re going to know more about baseball than 80 percent of the coaches anywhere.”
“The first two or three months here,” added Franks, “I felt like I learned more about baseball than I had the rest of my entire life.”
That Schaly has been able to keep up his frenetic winning pace through the decades – considering the vast changes in the game and in college athletes in general – is a testament to his evolution as a coach.
The Eagles have had just one losing season in his 27 years at AU. They have won at least 30 games 21 times.
He said he’s learned to be a bit more consistently positive with his players.
“I continually try to learn and find better ways to do things,” Schaly said. “We’ve changed a lot in our system over the years; I’m not set in my ways, so if there’s a better way to do it, we’re gonna change.”
“Our older guys teach our younger guys how we do things here,” he added. “In a lot of ways, it’s better for a teammate to do it instead of a coach. I think we’ve built a strong culture.”
The coach said the Ashland baseball program has gone through more all-around change over the last three years than in the entirety of his time at AU before then.
Not only did Ashland switch conferences to the GMAC after a lengthy membership with the GLIAC, but the Eagles also enjoyed a massive overhaul to an all-turf baseball playing surface. The facility is known as Tomassi Stadium and Donges Field at the Archer Ballpark Complex.
Add in the university’s indoor Niss Athletic Center – which opened in late 2021 – and Schaly said recruiting, practices, scheduling and games all have seen massive improvements.
The combination of everything together makes it easy to assume Schaly and Ashland baseball is going to continue its dominance, regardless of what happens in this week’s Midwest Regional.
The Eagles have made the Division II College World Series five times under Schaly, most recently in 2019 (48-15 record).
The coach, despite interviewing for four or five Division I jobs through the years, has deep roots in Ashland, having raised a family of three children alongside his wife, Becky.
“I’d rather be somewhere where we’ve got a chance to play in a World Series and play for a national championship,” he said. “If I got a D-I job, it would have been a mid-major that probably had no chance to win the World Series.”
“If you would have told me 27 years ago I’d still be here now, I probably would have said you’re crazy. … But it’s been great for us.”
The longer he coaches, the closer Schaly gets to the colossal achievements of his father, the late Don Schaly. He led the baseball program at Marietta College for 40 years, piling up 1,438 wins in the process – currently 11th all-time among NCAA baseball coaches.
John said his wife mentions trying to reach his father’s numbers every now and then, adding that he thinks it’s because she doesn’t want him around the house too much.
“I’m going to keep going as long as I’m enjoying it and being around the guys,” he said.
“This is my 37th year and I plan on getting to 40, so at least three more years. Then we’ll see from there.”
