Profile
The first high school coach ever elected President of the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA), Tom O’Connell recently retired after 51 years of coaching baseball. From 1969 – 2000, he coached at Pulaski High School in Milwaukee where his teams won more games than any sport in the school’s history. After retiring from the school as a teacher, he coached the next 15 years at suburban Catholic Central High School in Burlington, Wisconsin where his Hilltoppers won five State Championships while appearing in the State Quarterfinals a record ten straight years. For the last five years of his career, he worked at reviving a program which had fallen on hard times in St. Francis, Wisconsin.
Throughout his career, O’Connell received many accolades including being selected National Coach of the Year three times: in 2004, 2010 and 2011. In 1995, he coached the USA Baseball North Team in the United States Olympic Festival in Colorado, the last of such festivals ever conducted. He was also named Midwest Coach of the Year four times, conference coach of the year on numerous occasions, and has been inducted into five different Halls of Fame including that of the ABCA where in 2007 became only the 16th high school coach to be inducted in its history.
After leading the High School Division of the ABCA from 1984-1996, he was elected an officer of the group and served as President in 2002. He now serves on the Board of Directors and hosts the International Coaches Reception at its annual convention. He presided over the Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association for 20 years and in 1991 was named the Wisconsin Man of the Year.
When asked, O’Connell will readily say he is most proud of two of his accomplishments: one is helping develop the ABCA Code of Ethics and chairing a committee which chooses yearly recipients for the Dave Keilitz Ethics in Coaching Award, one of the organizations most prestigious honors, which is presented to active coaches whose careers have embodied the concepts in the ABCA Ethics Code, and the other is his ongoing work in international baseball first as a resident Envoy Coach and for the past 20 years educating coaches with ISG Baseball.
An accomplished author, O’Connell has published three books, Coaching Baseball: Techniques and Tactics, one of the top selling baseball handbooks, Coaching Youth Baseball, a manual for youth coaches, and Play Ball: 100 Baseball Practice Games. He also edited Cincinnati Red’s pitching coach Derek Johnson’s successful Complete Guide to Pitching.
Coach O’Connell is a frequent speaker at clinics around the United States and Europe having presented at coaching clinics in eleven states, eleven European nations and in New Zealand. He is president of ISG Baseball and oversees the organization and planning of its annual winter coaching clinics. O’Connell served as the Lead Envoy Coach in Germany for Major League Baseball beginning in 1993 – spending fifteen of his summers developing players and coaches – and has scouted for the Dodgers, Reds, Phillies and Orioles.
Besides his avocation in baseball, he has been intensely involved with Milwaukee Irish Fest, the largest Irish music festival in the world, serving on its Board of Directors, supervising Festival activities and booking entertainment. He and his wife Paula celebrated their golden anniversary in 2017. They have three grown children and six grandchildren.
