Clement, Ole Miss find their way to CWS finals together
1998 Marshalltown graduate on cusp of NCAA baseball title
Trending
As he stands in the third base coaches box this weekend at Charles Schwab Park in Omaha, 1998 Marshalltown High School graduate Mike Clement won't have time to reflect on how he got there.
On Friday, a day before the University of Mississippi challenges Oklahoma in the College World Series, Clement couldn't help but look back in time.
Clement, in his eighth season as the hitting coach with the Ole Miss baseball program, will be participating in his first CWS final since becoming a collegiate baseball coach in 2005. He was an assistant coach when Texas A&M qualified for the College World Series in 2011, but the Aggies went 0-2.
After two seasons as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Kansas State, Clement has settled into a job in the Southeastern Conference that has at last brought him to the pinnacle of the sport.
"It's hard for me to call it a grind because I get to coach baseball for a living, and that's something not very many people get to do for a living is put on shorts and a T-shirt and go to work," Clement said. "A few different times as a player at Morningside or Kirkwood or especially as a young coach at Kirkwood or Morningside or even at Texas-San Antonio, I remember doing some of the things coaches do that's not on the field -- like equipment stuff -- and I thought I'd love to just get to a place where I've got a chance to just coach baseball and go to Omaha.
"I'm obviously at that place now and we're fortunate enough to be in Omaha now."
And when Ole Miss head coach Mike Bianco relays his signals into Clement in the third base coaches box during this weekend's best-of-three series, he jokingly hopes he doesn't screw them up.
"I think it's amazing as a 42-year-old guy that's been doing this for 15 years or so, a lot of the foundation of what I do from a baseball standpoint I learned as a young kid from my dad (Brad Clement) and coach (Steve) Hanson. It's incredible that I've learned from a lot of really good guys. The foundation of what I do now, I learned at the Bobcat baseball field somewhere between the ages of 5- and 18-years-old. Those two guys just had a profound impact on me as a person and as a coach.
"As far as being grounded and not too worked up in the moment, my faith is a big part of that. And by now the work has been done -- it's up to the guys to go play. Hopefully we've prepared our players well and obviously it's worked to this point."
The Rebels (40-23) and Sooners (45-22) square off Saturday at 6 p.m. and again Sunday at 2 p.m. The deciding third game of the College World Series, if needed, will be played Monday at 6 p.m. Each game will be broadcast by ESPN and streamed live on ESPN3.com.
Going into the finals, Ole Miss has averaged 7.44 runs per game in Omaha. Through the regular season, the Rebels finished third in the country with 656 hits and fifth in runs scored with 478, according to the school's website.
Ole Miss reached the super regionals each of the last three seasons (2019, 2021, 2022) -- "COVID won in 2020," Clement said -- finally breaking through this spring after getting to that winner-take-all third game in both 2019 and 2021.
"At my age you don't get to do new things very often, so this is a first for me and for Ole Miss," Clement said of reaching the CWS finals. "We made it to Omaha when I was a volunteer assistant at Texas A&M in 2011 and that was the first year of the new ballpark, so I missed Rosenblatt (Stadium) by one year. That stinks. Obviously being from Marshalltown, as a kid you'd come over to Omaha and go to games at Rosenblatt, so I missed that by a year, but I'll take TD Ameritrade Park or Charles Schwab Field."
Clement says he manages to make it back to Marshalltown at least once a year during the holidays, and a family vacation to Clear Lake in the summer is another reason he returns from Oxford, Miss. This summer's midwest trip, however, has taken a detour thanks to a veteran group of baseball players who simply enjoy playing a kids' game together.
"The difference in this group of offensive players is that baseball is not the most important thing to them, they just love being together, hanging out together," Clement said. "The relationships, those are the important things to them and because of that they play with freedom.
"It's well documented we had a really rough stretch of games and were dead in the water, and what's unique about this group is we've been playing must-win games for five weeks now. The pressure of the postseason never got to this group. All of those things combined makes it a pretty special group and they know what to expect. At this point as a coach you just try to stay out of their way."