A successful stint: Kevin Soellner, state champion baseball coach at Tyrone, stepping down
Trending
Kevin Soellner became the second state championship winning coach to step down from his post at Tyrone this year when he sent a resignation letter to athletic director Luke Rhoades Aug. 24 after meeting with Rhoades the week before.
Soellner led the Golden Eagles to their only PIAA championship in 2021 when Tyrone defeated Oley Valley, 5-0, in the 3A title game.
"Every year, I thought I was done," Soellner said. "I always joke about it. It's just the time. Nothing has really changed other than I had time to reflect. In my heart, I probably would have coached until I died. But it was a lot of things. As far as family, I have new grandkids coming. I have an 8-month old and another due in February.
"I have some older grandkids, but they all live in Tyrone. The new one is going to be in Pittsburgh. I had a son just get married that lives in Virginia, and they'll probably have some kids coming too. It's family and the amount of time it all takes."
Soellner coached Tyrone for 11 years and finished 119-95.
"My selfish goal was to have 100 wins," Soellner said. "I figured if I got to that number, it meant something good was happening. That was my one selfish goal. I never usually had a personal goal. I never put that out there, but that was my line of if we had success or not, 100 wins."
In addition to the state championship, the Golden Eagles won two Curve Classic championships and this year's District 6 Class 3A title under his coaching.
John Franco, who led Tyrone to a PIAA football championship in 1999, retired in January. Soellner stepping down means the two team sports that have won state titles in Tyrone will be under new leadership this school year.
"The whole group that came through and won states, those kids were just fantastic," Soellner said. "It truly was a lot because of the kids. We have had other good groups of kids, and there's still a good group that is left. They will bring back a lot of pieces from a team that just won districts. But honestly, everything comes down to the kids. I had a lot of good coaches that helped too, but the kids have to do the work, and they did."
Rhoades said the advertisement for a new coach should come out soon, and Tyrone will look to fill the position in a timely manner.
"Kevin brought stability to our baseball program and worked really hard on boosting the program at all levels," Rhoades said. "The success he experienced as a coach is a reflection of his hard work."
Had he not stepped down, Soellner -- who also coached the Tyrone entry in the George B. Kelley Federation in the summers -- would have already started work on next year's team.
"If I wouldn't have resigned, we probably would have started hitting this weekend," Soellner said. "When school starts, we would start on Saturdays. It's pretty much all year. I would take a break in the month of August after the Federation season in July and then start back up."
Tyrone finally won a District 6 baseball championship for the first time since 1992 this year with a win over Philipsburg-Osceola, but Soellner said achieving a goal his program had strived for his entire tenure did not make it any easier to step away.
"That actually made it harder," Soellner said. "You want to go back and defend it and try to repeat. But, I guess it's kind of like John Elway walking out on top. In my heart, I would love to coach until I couldn't."
Despite all of the accolades Soellner reached in coaching, his best memories involve the players who helped the program achieve those heights.
"The kids -- seeing them come back and bring their kids around and introducing me to their kids and telling stories about that has been great," Soellner said. "The achievements are obviously the biggest memories, but it's more than that. It's like you have a big family now. When something happens to one of them, a lot of them will call and say something about it to me. That's way bigger than baseball. That's what you hope when you go in, that you teach them something that helps them the rest of their lives."
During Soellner's run at Tyrone, the Golden Eagles' biggest rival was Central -- a team with plenty of history and its own state championships.
In 2021, Central defeated Tyrone in the District 6 championship before the Golden Eagles came back to win over the Scarlet Dragons in the PIAA semifinals in front of a high school record crowd for Peoples Natural Gas Field.
"There's a lot of mutual respect," Central coach A.J. Hoenstine said. "We had two teams that were usually pretty good. We had some fantastic battles, but there's a lot of respect there. We'd help each other out with scouting reports of other teams if one of us was knocked out. He always had his teams ready to play. I know he put a ton of time in for his team and his players. A lot of people don't realize the behind the scenes things you need to do to be successful. He did that. Even though we were rivals, there was always respect between the coaches and players on both teams."
The teams met a couple times at PNG Field in addition to the state semifinal and always had big crowds.
"That was awesome to see," Hoenstine said. "Our community as well as Tyrone are top notch as far as supporting their athletic programs. That was just really something to see at the Curve the couple times we played there. The atmosphere was like nothing you see in high school baseball."
The respect between Soellner and Hoenstine went both ways.
"A.J. has reached out and helped different players of mine get into colleges," Soellner said. "Looking back at Kevin Lehner and Rodney Shultz, he was willing to call colleges for them and stuff like that. He has a program we would all like to emulate, and there is really a shared respect there."
Though he won't be the head coach when Tyrone takes the field next spring, Soellner can't imagine his life without baseball.
"I don't know what else I would do. I don't do anything else," Soellner said. "My wife is already on me about doing stuff around the house. I have never done much other than mowing the grass, so it's going to be a really big change in that way trying to figure out what to do with my time, but my eight-month old grandkid lives next door to me. That will help. My youngest son is already asking me to coach T-ball and Little League."
In his resignation letter, Soellner made certain to thank the people around him.
"I want to thank the school," Soellner said. "Without them being willing to help in so many ways, you can't do it. This year, they resurfaced the infields, which was beautiful. They were willing to do all kinds of stuff. A lot of coaches helped me over the years. I would have never been able to do it without them."