Coaching Legend Coming To Town

By Rick Wells, News On 6

TULSA, OK -- Oklahoma State baseball legends don't come to town every day, but former OSU baseball coach Gary Ward will be in Tulsa this weekend to teach baseball.

It may be the perfect opportunity to get a young player a head start on the next season.

Like many parents of young ball players, I've helped coach my son's team over the years. When I run out of ideas and motivation I often turn to Steve Yoder, a former Oklahoma state player, who owns Perfect Practice, a year round indoor training facility.

He uses what he learned at OSU to make kids better baseball players.

Well, the teacher's teacher is coming to town. Former OSU head baseball coach Gary Ward is coming to Tulsa to talk hitting.

"You want everybody to walk out with a sense of ownership of what it takes to become a good hitter, it'll be all about offensive baseball," said Ward.

Ward coached OSU to 17 Big 8 championships and 10 College World Series appearances. He says OSU was so successful for so long because they changed their approach to the game.

"For years it was a game that was just played, part of our success at Oklahoma State was that we learned how to teach it," said Ward.

He says he's refined those teaching techniques and developed a series of clinics to help teach kids the basics and their parents and coaches drills and swing components to make them better hitters.