Waddups hired as Glen Oaks head baseball coach

Jul. 13—Tucker Waddups has landed a head coaching job at Glen Oaks Community College at the age of 25.

Glen Oaks is a JUCO school located in Centreville, Michigan.

"Obviously I'm very fortunate for the opportunity," Waddups said. "I feel it's a total God thing. My faith is the most important thing in my life and I think obviously God has given me the opportunity to take this job on. I'm really excited to get going. I think that there's a lot of really good things that can come of Glen Oaks. Glen Oaks used to be really good back in the day. Joel Mishler is our athletic director. He used to be the head coach here. Back when he was here I don't know for sure what the numbers were but I think he was here for 10 season and they went to the national tournament for nine.

"They were really good back in the day and he had some Division I guys and drafted guys, so he had a lot of success when he was here and now he just took the athletic job in August. He was like, 'hey, I'm looking for someone to come in and turn this thing around.' We got connected and it worked out and I'm excited and ready to get going. We just finished up our '23 class, I'm waiting to hear on one more arm. Then we're moving to the '24 class and trying to get things going. I'm excited and ready to get to work."

Waddups graduated from Pioneer in 2016 as one of the best pitchers in school history. He set numerous school records, including ERA (0.33 in 2016, 0.86 in career), home runs (17), wins (11 in 2016, 31 in career), amongst other school bests.

In college, Waddups pitched for current Indiana University pitching coach Dustin Glant while attending Anderson University as a freshman. With Glant's departure from Anderson, Waddups transferred and finished his playing career at perennially strong Taylor University for head coach Kyle Gould's Trojans from 2018-2021. While at Taylor, Waddups logged 127 innings on the mound and finished with a career ERA of 4.01. While at Taylor, he was part of a team that qualified for the opening round of the NAIA National Tournament and was ranked as high as 20th in the nation at one point. Waddups also pitched for the Kokomo Jackrabbits in the summers of 2018-2019.

"Ultimately like everybody I wanted to play professional baseball," Waddups said, "but I realized when I got to college that low to mid 80s didn't cut it. I wanted to do it but I wasn't good enough. I accepted it. I think that's where a lot of people struggle is understanding what it really takes to be a pro guy. Then I've always been passionate about coaching and teaching and that kind of thing. So I knew by my junior year there's not question I want to coach college baseball. So about my junior year I transitioned from trying to become a pro to how am I going to get into coaching."

Waddups began his coaching school when he was still a player in college by coaching the Indiana Chargers 13U team the summer of his junior season. He coached the Indiana Nitro 15U team the next summer. He was the head coach of both teams.

Right after his playing career ended at Taylor in May of 2021, he got a job coaching the Jackrabbits in the Northwoods League that summer.

That fall he was hired as the pitching coach at NAIA Mount Vernon Nazarene University under legendary head coach Keith Veale. Mount Vernon Nazarene posted a record of 39-19 and captured the regular season Crossroads League Championship, granting them a birth to the NAIA opening round. Waddups was a graduate assistant at Mount Vernon Nazarene and is in the process of earning a master's degree in organizational management from there by this fall.

Waddups got hired as a fulltime coach the next year as the pitching coach at NAIA Reinhardt University in Waleska, Georgia under head coach Jonathan Burton. In Waddups' only year at Reinhardt, his staff posted a 34-20 record while finishing second in the Appalachian Athletic Conference and capturing a post-season bid into the NAIA opening round of their National Tournament.

Waddups has also remained coaching in the Northwoods League during the summers and coached with the Traverse City Pit Spitters last year and is currently with the Kenosha Kingfish.

His ties with Northwoods League helped him land a job this summer as an associate scout with the Kansas City Royals, where he works directly with another Logansport native, Mike Farrell.

"He's my area scout. Essentially the associate scout reports to the area scout," Waddups said.

Being an associate scout for a Major League team helps recruiting for his new college team.

"No doubt. When you know you have a first-hand relationship with not just Mike but I've been fortunate enough to meet a lot of scouts and a lot of guys in pro ball along the way, so it's a good situation," Waddups said.

It's not uncommon for JUCO schools to produce baseball players who are eventually drafted and that is the kind of program Waddups is looking to build at Glen Oaks. He said conference opponents Kellogg and Lansing are already at that level.

"They put guys into professional baseball every year. It's a tough league, it's going to be tough competition but it'll be fun to compete against those teams and try to build a roster that can be as good as them," he said.

Waddups added the JUCO route offers a lot of players a chance to play right away out of high school.

"It's become so relevant today because so many guys come in as a 17, 18 year old and you're just trying to earn a spot somewhere. Most of the time when you go the four-year route it's going to be really challenging unless you're going to a small program that maybe they doesn't have very many numbers or things like that. But for the most part it's going to be a challenge to play right away," he said. "When you have the junior college route you have the opportunity as a 17 and 18 year olds, you're competing with other 17 and 18 year olds, maybe 19, maybe 20. But the four-year route especially with Covid you're competing with 22, 23, there's some 24 year olds still playing. It's a much more challenging thing to play right away.

"I just think the junior college route provides the opportunity to have a chance to play right away as a freshman. More times than not a high school kid is a lot more undersized than a junior or senior, so it gives you a year or two to get bigger, faster, stronger, get in the weight room, get a good throwing program, all that kind of stuff."

Waddups added JUCO schools offer the bigger college programs a fertile recruiting ground.

"All the four-year schools are looking to junior colleges now, especially the Division I, power fives, they're looking for guys that have proven themselves at the college level," he said. "If you go to a junior college and have two really good years, if you can showcase you can do it at the junior college level and do it well, the four-years are going to take a lot bigger risk on a guy like that than an unproven high school player. That's where I think junior colleges have kind of just taken over."