Courtesy of Brent Clark Photos
Over the past nine years, the Grove City High School baseball team has won six Ohio Capital Conference championships, three district championships and has twice made it to the state championship semifinals.
For coach Ryan Alexander, that means a cap so laden with feathers as to invite a visit to the chiropractor. But pushing the baseball Greyhounds to success is only a part of Alexander’s contributions to the school he’s been part of for the past decade and a half.
The season that ended in May was Alexander’s 10th as head coach, and his 15th on the GCHS coaching staff. The 2017-18 school year marked his 15th teaching GCHS students with special needs.
Playing
Long before he was ever a baseball coach, Alexander was a baseball player. Growing up in Martins Ferry – in eastern Ohio, just north of Wheeling, West Virginia – he started playing at age 5. He’s loved the sport as far back as he can remember.
Baseball is a great game to play growing up, Alexander says, because it helps develop the skills necessary to endure hardship. It is – as many people who have studied and played it, most memorably baseball legend Cal Ripken Jr., have said – a game of failure.
One need only look at the highest all-time career batting average – .366, held for almost 90 years by Ty Cobb – to see the odds against scoring a hit in any given at-bat, and dealing with such infrequent success teaches crucial life skills, Alexander says.
“I think it’s a great game for kids of all ages,” he says.
Alexander played in high school and college, and didn’t want his involvement in the sport to end when his college career did.
“Once they told me I couldn’t play anymore, I knew I wanted to be a coach,” he says.
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In the 10 seasons that Alexander has spent as the head coach, he has sent more than 50 players on to play collegiate baseball.
Teaching
Alexander went to Muskingum College to study education, but it wasn’t until his sophomore year that his path became crystal clear.
He already knew a school setting was the right fit for him. Even as a student, he never wanted to miss a day.
That year, though, he took a summer practicum course and spent a month traveling to schools and other agencies to learn about special needs education. Once that was over, he knew exactly what he wanted to do.
Grove City made perfect sense for Alexander. Not only were there two GCHS alumni on the Fighting Muskies baseball team, he’s known Jim Habermehl, his predecessor as Greyhounds head coach, since he was a kid.
Alexander knew enough about the city to know it felt similar to Martins Ferry, and he came straight here after graduation. He and his wife, Melissa, live in Orient with their three children, ages 2, 5 and 7.
Melissa is a Grove City native herself – a star basketball player at GCHS in the late 1990s and early 2000s who went on to play for Miami University.
During the school year, Alexander teaches two periods each day in a smaller classroom with an average of 12 students. He spends four other periods working with other teachers in transitional algebra and algebra 2.
Teaching students with special needs is inspirational on a consistent basis, he says, with new and different successes happening all the time.
“I absolutely love getting up in the morning and going to school,” he says.
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Alexander always knew he would end up working in a school setting. When he was offered the chance to teach in a community similar to the one in which he grew up, he knew Grove City was he right place for him.
Coaching
The championship accomplishments – not to mention the Greyhounds’ top-20 ranking in eight of Alexander’s first nine seasons as head coach – would suggest Alexander has been a positive force at GCHS. But he heaps credit upon the players, who, he says, work tirelessly at their craft. And not just in the spring; some of them are training 12 months a year.
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A student of Alexander's
“We really think we’ve got something good going here with the kids coming up and our current players,” he says.
The players train and play like they want to be the best, Alexander says, and he believes the GCHS program has, and has had, some of the best players in the state. A total of 44 players have gone on to play college ball since he took over, including 10 from the class of 2017, and there are more signing from the class of 2018.
“That’ll put us over 50 players in 10 years,” he says.
And he respects more than just the players’ skill and perseverance. He also respects and encourages the work they do to be involved in the community, such as through summer and winter baseball camps that bring in 100 -150 children apiece, and an annual mulch sale fundraiser.
“We sold and delivered over 19,000 bags of mulch this year to the Grove City community,” Alexander says.
Several of the players help out with Buddy Ball, a baseball program for children and adults with mental and physical disabilities at the Mirolo Dream Field at Mount Carmel Stadium. That includes a team manager who plays on the team, and Alexander encourages his players to support the manager and to volunteer with the program to support all the children and adults who participate.
He also gives a lot of credit to Habermehl, who he says built a fantastic program before his retirement.
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Alexander has a great deal of respect for his players and their work ethics on and off the field.
Final Numbers
The GCHS Greyhounds finished the 2018 season 18-9. Though they lost in districts, the greyhounds finished the season ranked No. 10 in the state and No. 3 in the Central District out of 48 teams.
Garth Bishop is a contributing editor. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
