Coach Clinger began his coaching career assisting his son's high school summer team. He was instantly hooked and continued to do that for two years. From there, he started the Westerville American Legion team so players in his son's class would have a place to play in between high school graduation and college ball. That year the team ended up losing their District Championship to the eventual Ohio State Legions Champs. In the mid-90's he created and coached the Westerville Boys of Summer team, a college player Summer program made up of mainly NCAA D-III players, winning double championships our 3rd year.
Clinger's coaching opportunities really took off when he was an assistant coach with the Delaware Cows of the Great Lakes Collegiate Wood Bat League. There, he worked with NCAA D-I players from places like Mississippi and Mississippi State, Clemson, LSU, Georgia, and locally from Ohio State, Ball State and Kent State. Working with this level of players made him realize that college baseball is where he wanted to coach, as the players knew the fundamentals and just needed to learn the fine points of the game. This led Clinger to an 8-year run as an assistant coach at Ohio Wesleyan University, where he coached the catcher and also worked with batting, base running and corner infielders. OWU is where he developed recruiting abilities and learned the inner workings of what all a collegiate head coach is responsible for doing. This opportunity also allowed him to learn about field maintenance and maintaining a well-conditioned ball field.
Clinger says that Hocking has given him the opportunity to put all of his experience into developing a new program and he's definitely looking forward to the challenge. He wants to start a winning tradition from the very start here at Hocking College.
