Head Coach Dennis Kelly is abruptly woken up by the sound of his alarm.
4:30 a.m.
He musters up all his energy and gets ready before heading out to St. Mark’s for batting practice. Once he arrives on campus, he unloads his gear and waits for his players to arrive.
One hour and 15 minutes — that’s how long his commute is every morning. What may seem long to some people is just a fraction of the time Kelly has spent chasing baseball, a journey that began long before sunrise practices and head coaching titles.
From an early age, Kelly was instilled with the love for sports by his family. Whether it was baseball or basketball, sports were a core part of his childhood that ended up shaping Kelly as a man.
“I think it was just baked into the way my parents raised us,” Kelly said. “We all grew up playing soccer and I loved basketball, probably equally to baseball in Middle School, but my love for baseball just completely took over from late middle school through high school.”
But loving the game and excelling at it were two different things. His love for baseball was often not enough as Kelly had to overcome his physical disadvantages just to keep up with other kids.
“I was always this small kid,” Kelly said. “I would play extremely hard, love the game, and, you know, had some skill and talent. I was a very late bloomer, and I’d say that that had a lot to do with my formation as a baseball player, because I couldn’t rely on strength, because I didn’t have it when compared to a lot of my peers who were like grown men at 16, 17, 18, so I had to work really hard just to be average. I mean, really through high school, I did a lot of work just to be in the middle of the road.”
Although he did not excel in high school, he still earned an offer from Austin College to play Division III college baseball. Nonetheless, the difference between Division One and Three in terms of scholarships showed Kelly how far he still had to go.
“Those are both D3 schools so ‘recruited’ is kind of a relative term, like they were interested in me,” Kelly said. “They wanted me to come there academically and play baseball, you know, but there were no scholarships being given to me, that’s for sure.”
Coming out of college as a business major, Kelly went on to become a stock broker for a year, but even in the office and far from the field, his passion for baseball kept calling him back to the sport he loved.
“There was nothing wrong with the path that I was going on in the business world,” Kelly said. “In stock brokerage, I really liked the company and I only have positive things to say about that experience, it’s just that my heart was clearly still in baseball and I knew that there was a window that was closing quickly. So like with any sport, especially playing professional level, as you get older, that window just closes faster and faster.”
After he left his job, with help from a friend Kelly was able to go and play baseball overseas. He moved from Europe to Australia and played in several different countries. For Kelly, the teams he played for and the teammates he played with taught him a new side of baseball — one that focused on companionship.
“I loved (baseball), but just spending a whole bunch of time outside the baseball field with my buddies, playing cards and traveling with my friends, the relationships were probably the number one (thing),” Kelly said.
After playing for over five years in Europe, Kelly decided to move back to the U.S. to grow a family and start a new stage in his life, which led him to find a coaching job for a club baseball team and eventually, one at St. Mark’s.
“I was coaching with the Dallas Mustangs. And one of the Mustangs coaches that was also coaching at St Mark’s… got a job offer… So his position opened up, and Coach Carpenter helped me get in touch with Coach Hunter,” Kelly said.
Although he was not playing in the field anymore, Kelly found a great purpose in coaching younger men and helping them become better players and people.
“I just think that wanting to help people and coach is probably what opened up the doors, because it’s fun and it’s a good opportunity to continue to help other people,” Kelly said.
What made Kelly step away from his corporate job back to the game of his childhood was his undying love for baseball and his desire to help others grow. His experience at St. Mark’s has only strengthened the passion he has for coaching as he spends more time at the school.
“I don’t think that I would have accepted the position, nor would I have made the daily drive in if I didn’t love it,” Kelly said. “I love the school, the athletes that come there every morning dedicated to work because they’re getting up early to hit at 7:15 in the morning, and they want to stay after school and hit the field house. They want to go on the field and throw and I think that a lot of us, we just share this desire to see how good we can be together, and I can feel it, and it’ll be really fun to see this entire spring season come together.”
Kelly’s journey from being one of the smallest kids on his team in high school to eventually playing professional baseball overseas is a testament to how consistency and hard work can open doors to success.
“Consistency, like I mentioned a moment ago, a consistent ordering of good habits every single day towards a desired end to play and perform at a high level,” Kelly said. “That’s the advice I’d give my high school self.”