Tom O’Connell
Catholic Central High School
Impact Statement
O’Connell was the first high school coach ever elected president of the college-dominated American Baseball Coaches Association.
Biography
The first high school coach ever elected president of the college-dominated American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA), O’Connell has spent 42 years coaching baseball.
From 1969 through 2000, he coached at Milwaukee Pulaski High School, where his teams won more games than any sport in the school’s history. He led Pulaski to state tournament berths in 1981, when they reached the state semifinals, and in 1989. He has been at Burlington Catholic Central for 11 seasons, and his Hilltopper teams have made the state quarterfinals eight consecutive years. They went on to win four state championships, in 2004, 2005, 2008 and 2010.
O’Connell has twice been named the Diamond Sports National High School Coach of the Year by the ABCA, most recently in 2010, and has been named Midwest Coach of the Year four times. In 1995, he skippered the USA Baseball North Team in the United States Olympic Festival in Colorado, a team that featured four future major leaguers. O’Connell chaired the ABCA’s High School Division from 1984-96, and now serves on its Board of Directors and heads its Ethics in Coaching Award Committee.
A former president of the Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association, O’Connell organized and ran the group’s annual clinic and convention for 20 years and, in 1991, was named its Man of the Year. He has been inducted into three Halls of Fame: the Old Time Baseball Players Hall of Fame in Milwaukee, the WBCA Hall of Fame in 1987 and the ABCA Hall of Fame in 2007, becoming only the 16th high school coach to be inducted in the ABCA’s 64-year history.
O’Connell continued to coach until 2015 when he left Catholic
Photos
