High school baseball: Former Medina coach Nick Kaplack inducted into NEOBCA Hall of Fame

Former Medina baseball coach Nick Kaplack took his place among the best in the business recently, when he was inducted into the Northeast Ohio Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame (NEOBCA).Kaplack was honored at Akron's 7-17 Credit Union Ballpark during the NEOBCA all-star games, along with Scott Barber, Anthony Boarman, Tom Yingling and Rick Mulinix.The coach doesn't remember exactly how he found out he was officially getting inducted, but he does remember a conversation he had with current Medina baseball coach Mark Kelly in which the topic of it being a possibility came up but he wasn't sure if it would become a reality."Mark Kelly and I were talking and he had mentioned something to me about it, and I wasn't sure," Kaplack said. "Then when I heard about it later, it was surprising to me, but a nice surprise."While at the helm of the Bees for 15 seasons, Kaplack compiled a record of 235-186, won two Northeast Ohio Conference River Division titles and led Medina to four regional appearances and was named the 2010 Gazette Spring Coach of the Year.He also coached two players who were picked in the MLB Draft in Mike Ellenbest and Austin Havekost, both drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays, Ellenbest in 2016 and Havekost in 2018.Those memories came flooding back to Kaplack as he stood on the field during the ceremony."When you coach a lot of years, unfortunately you remember the tough losses," Kaplack said. "When someone puts something together and you read the bio or you read whatever, you almost forget that you did a lot of that stuff over time, so it was nice."One of the things Kaplack was most proud of from his time at Medina was the willingness to schedule the best competition. That included playing against a lot of coaches who have also bee inducted into the NEOBCA Hall of Fame."When we were looking at it, I think there were like 27 coaches in that Hall of Fame that I've actually had games against over the years," Kaplack said. "It was neat to see that we played against a lot of those guys, a lot of great coaches."It wasn't just about playing the good teams from Ohio while he coached the Bees either. Kaplack recalled one trip down to Florida where they faced a pitcher who would go on to be named a Major League Baseball All-Star twice and win two World Series titles."Most of the years (I was there, we) went to Florida and sometimes we would leave there with one win, two wins," Kaplack said. "The one year we're going up against a team, and the starting pitcher is Walker Buehler."After leaving Medina following the 2021 season, Kaplack found a spot on the coaching staff at Cuyahoga Community College as a hitting coach under former head coach Kyle Stahlberg before being named the interim head coach prior to the 2025-26 season when Stahlberg took a job with the Miami Marlins organization.In his first season as the head coach at Tri-C, Kaplack built off the success he and Stahlberg had in the previous two seasons, as the Triceratops won their third consecutive Ohio Community College Athletic Conference championship and finished with a 34-18-1 record.Under Kaplack, Tri-C went on the longest postseason run in program history, picking up four wins in the National Junior College Athletic Association Region 12 Championships to finish as regional runners-up, just one win shy of the program's first ever trip to the NJCAA Division II Baseball World Series in Enid, Oklahoma. "It was always about the playoff run," Kaplack said. "(Coach Stahlberg and I) were talking about this year coming up and how do we get a deep playoff run, and that's always been the focus. It's always been about taking one more step from what you did the season before, and now you know the one more step is going to be actually getting to Oklahoma."The Tri-C roster in 2026 had three former Medina players in senior Nate Hill and freshmen Lincoln Briggs and Zeylan Yanmaz and will bring in Kaeden Kostilnik next season. There were also a number of other Medina County players, including Wadsworth's Kyle Figuray and Ethan Green, Buckeye's Andy Schneider and Black River's Travis Dean.Hunter Havekost, who played for Kaplack at Medina, also served as an assistant coach on Tri-C's staff last year."In the last 20 years, the county has been loaded in baseball," Kaplack said. "You can name every school in the county, and they've had solid players."Contact Ryan Isley at sports@medina-gazette.com.