BELLVILLE — Rusty Staab can ride into the sunset knowing the program he built is in good hands.
Clear Fork’s longtime baseball coach announced before the start of the season that this year would be his last in the dugout. Then the baseball lifer led the Colts to the Division III state tournament for a second year in a row, falling in the semifinals to eventual state champ Warren Champion earlier this month.
Staab’s oldest son, 2010 Clear Fork graduate Joe Staab, is expected to take the reins next spring.
“It was 25 years at Clear Fork and 35 total. It’s time to leave,” Staab said after the Colts’ 2-1 loss to Champion at Huntington Park in Columbus. “I can sit in a lawn chair and complain at umpires now.”
A Cincinnati Colerain graduate, Staab played collegiately at Xavier University in the early 1980s — he still owns the school’s single-season record for stolen bases with 49 in 1981. He began his coaching career at the Cincinnati Academy of Physical Education (C.A.P.E.) as the freshman coach and was an assistant at Chicago Nazareth Academy and Columbus De Sales before arriving at Clear Fork in the early 1990s.
“I came in the fall of ’92 and we had a bunch of young baseball people, both dads and kids,” Staab said. “They needed someone who was a baseball coach. At Clear Fork it was always the football coach who coached baseball or the basketball coach. They needed a guy who was a teacher and a baseball coach and that is when I came along.”
Staab led the Colts to district championships in 1995, 2000 and 2005 before stepping down after the 2005 season. He was replaced by Jeremy Riddle, who led the Colts to a Division II district title in 2009 and the Division III state crown in 2010. Joe Staab was the second baseman on the state championship team.
“I never played for dad in high school, but he coached our summer ball team,” said Joe Staab, who played collegiately at Heidelberg. “Coach Riddle did a great job with the high school team, but dad always felt like he was a part of the state championship team.”
Rusty Staab was the head coach at Fredericktown in 2011 before returning as Clear Fork’s head coach in 2013. The Colts won an unlikely regional crown last year and returned to state with a team composed primarily of underclassmen this spring.
“There’s only three seniors,” Rusty Staab said. “There is a pretty good (returning) senior class.”
Joe Staab will inherit a team that includes his younger brother. Thomas Staab, a switch-hitting center fielder and a Division I prospect, will be a senior next year.
“It’s like a baton being handed off to the next guy and I don’t think Joe is going to drop it,” Rusty Staab said. “He’s got the enthusiasm I had 25 years ago and these kids are going to work hard for him.”
Joe Staab, who was the head coach at Wynford for two seasons and led the Royals to the Division IV district final in 2016, is looking forward to it.
“I played for dad for so long and heard him talk baseball for so long, there wasn’t a lot he said this year that I haven’t already heard him say,” Joe Staab said. “Still, bouncing ideas off each other this past season was a lot of fun.”
Rusty Staab is glad to turn the controls over to his son.
I’m proud to say I was part of a back-to-back state run,” Rusty Staab said. “It’s all Joe’s now.”
