Read Brown named Assistant Baseball Coach
Dec. 12—THOMASVILLE- During this past summer, Read Brown was named the assistant baseball coach by Head Coach Tom Fleenor. Read will also assume the duties of the head coach of the Night Hawks Reserves Baseball Team.
A native of Charlotte, N.C., Brown comes to Thomas after serving a stellar year at Mid-America Christian University. Brown led the Evangel Offense, was the scouting director, and helped guide the team to a 39-17 record. The Evangels won the NCCAA National Championship.
Prior to Mid-America, Brown was an assistant at Eastern Oklahoma State. In his lone season as the assistant hitting coach for the Mountaineers, Brown helped guide EOSC to a 51-5 overall record and a NJCAA Region II Championship. Brown's primary duties with Eastern Oklahoma State were to serve as assistant hitting coach and scouting director as the Mountaineers wrapped up a sensational year at the dish. With a .369 batting average, EOSC ranked fourth at the NJCAA Division I level while also boasting the nation's sixth-highest on-base percentage (.464) and 17th-best slugging percentage (.564).
Brown's longest tenure was at NCAA Division II East Stroudsburg University from 2019-2021, where he was the program's recruiting coordinator and assistant hitting coach. Brown also served as a third base coach and catching coach. As the recruiting coordinator, he brought in several talented players, including one player that was named an All-PSAC East catcher as a Freshman. In his three years with the Warriors, ESU amassed a 60-35-3 record while navigating through the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the summer of 2018, Brown was the head coach of the Hornell Dodgers, a summer league team out of Hornell, N.Y. that competes in the New York Collegiate Baseball League. During that summer, the Dodgers finished with a .310 batting average as a team while driving in 236 RBIs during the 42-game slate.
For the 2017 and 2018 seasons, Brown was the assistant coach and director of operations for Glenville State College, a NCAA Division II competitor out of Glenville, West Virginia. As a hitting and catching coach, Brown brought drastic improvement to the lineup. In his second season with the program, the team's home run production rose from 13 in 2017 to 28 in 2018 while the team's strikeout numbers dropped from 296 to 259.
Brown's first year of coaching experience came as a graduate assistant for NCAA Division II Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, N.C. from 2015-16. Not only did Brown assist his alma mater's varsity program, but also served as the program's JV Coach during his season with the Bears.
Brown also competed for three seasons as a player with Lenoir-Rhyne from 2012-14, earning his Bachelor's of Arts in Business Administration in 2014 and his Master's of Business Administration in 2016. Overall, Brown has developed some top-level talent at the collegiate level with more than 15 of his past players signing professional contracts thus far during his coaching career.
"I played for two years under Coach Fleenor, and was a Graduate Assistant for him for a year during his time at Lenoir-Rhyne University," Brown said. "I am so blessed to be back working for him at Thomas University. The town and the school have been so welcoming, and I cannot imagine a better place to be. I hope to use my experiences as a hitting coach at my previous stops to help Thomas University become even more successful than it has been in the past. There is no better place to be than TU."
Brown, and the rest of the Night Hawks baseball program, will be competing in a new conference this season, the Southern States Athletic Conference (SSAC). Thomas will open the 2024 baseball campaign on the road at Paine College on Sunday, January 28. Brown will coach his first home game at Varnedoe Field on Saturday, February 3, as the Night Hawks take on Talladega. The Night Hawks first conference match-up will also be on the road, February 16, as they travel to Loyola (LA). Home conference play begins on Saturday, February 17, with a doubleheader versus Brewton-Parker.
