ABCA Hall of Fame ISG
The first high school coach ever elected President of the American Baseball Coaches Association; Tom O’Connell enters his 50th year of coaching high school 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 Pulaski as a teacher, he coached the next 15 years at Catholic Central High School in Burlington, Wisconsin where his Hilltoppers teams made the Wisconsin State Tournament quarterfinals ten straight years and won five State Championships - 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2011. No other coach in Wisconsin prep history has won as many titles. For the last three seasons he has served as co-head coach coached at St. Francis High School.
O’Connell has been selected USA Coach of the Year three times: in 2011 by the National High School Coaches Association and in 2004 and 2010 by the ABCA. In 1995, he skippered the USA Baseball North Team that featured four future major leaguers in the United States Olympic Festival in Colorado, the last of such festivals ever conducted. He has been named Midwest Coach of the Year four times and conference coach of the year on numerous occasions.
O’Connell led the High School Division of the ABCA from 1984-1996 and now serves on the Board of Directors and also hosts the International coaches reception at the annual convention. He presided over the Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association for 20 years and in 1991 was named their Man of the Year. He has been inducted into five different Halls of Fame including the ABCA where in 2007 became only the 16th high school coach to ever be inducted in its 64-year history.
After helping develop the ABCA Code of Ethics, O’Connell formed and now chairs the committee whose task it has become to name yearly recipients for the Dave Keilitz Ethics in Coaching Award, presented each year to active coaches whose careers have embodied the concepts in the ABCA code. The award has grown to become one of that organization’s most prestigious honors.
An accomplished author, O’Connell has published three books with Human Kinetics Press, Coaching Baseball: Techniques and Tactics, one of the top selling baseball handbooks and the textbook for coach licensing in the USA, Coaching Youth Baseball, a manual for youth coaches, and Play Ball: 100 Baseball Practice Games. Recently he edited Milwaukee Brewers pitching coach Derek Johnson’s successful Complete Guide to Pitching.
Coach O’Connell is also a frequent speaker at clinics around the United States and Europe having presented at coaching clinics in eleven states and eleven European nations. He is president of International Sports Group and oversees the organization and planning of its annual winter coaching clinics. O’Connell has served as the Lead Envoy Coach in Germany for Major League Baseball since 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.
