Assistant baseball coach Patrick Kelly retires after eight seasons at Delta
After eight seasons of baseball of Delta College assistant coach Patrick Kelly has decided to retire. He received a jersey at his last game on February 8th.
Kelly started playing sports in the 1950’s, played baseball all through college, and received both a baseball and basketball scholarship to the University of Colorado.
Kelly said he didn’t really get into coaching until his son, Ty Kelly who went on to play for the Los Vegas Aviators — was old enough to play Little League.
“I was watching and then they were basically being good Samaritans, they didn’t know what was going on they asked me to help them.”
Kelly would go on to volunteer as his son’s coach until his son started high school. After his son graduated from St. Mary’s High School, the coach there asked him if he wanted to be part of their staff. Kelly agreed and coached at St. Mary’s for five years.
Kelly continued on to coach at Delta for eight years and spoke fondly of Rex and Reed Peters, highlighting their kind nature toward others. Rex is now a baseball coach for UCLA, Reed is the head baseball coach at Delta College.
“Reed and his brother Rex, are two amazing people. They are just the nicest guys, they are totally supportive of the players, the coaching staff. There’s a reason why they have so much success they’re just really good guys that treat people so well and so fairly.”
Kelly said he believes that Reed is one of the best coaches in the country, with kids from all over the world emailing the coaches for a chance to try out for the baseball team.
“He is so good that we will bring in kids that are really good players and they leave really good players with opportunities to play at four year schools or even professionally,” Kelly said.
Since the Mustangs did so well last season a good number of their freshman received scholarships from other schools. Last year they made it back to the state finals after capturing the state championship two seasons ago.
“So we were pretty much starting from scratch…a lot of kids come in from high school, they’ve never done fitness training, biometrics, (etc).”
Despite this, Kelly was really impressed with the team’s improvement and thinks the team is going to do well this season.
Kelly said he always promoted positivity towards students to be the best they can be.
“I love when I see them come in as freshmen and when they leave as sophomores they are a totally different person,” he said. “They’re mature, they’re respectful, they understand work ethic.”
The Mustangs are currently 13-5 on the season and last week they had three pitchers combine to pitch a no-hitter for the first time in the career of head coach Reed Peters.
Kohl Drake, Nathen Morris, and Beau Peters combined to pitch the no-hitter as the Mustangs defeated Modesto Junior College 17-0.