Former two-time Peach Belt Conference Pitcher of the Year Grant Reynolds has returned to the state Georgia and college coaching as the new assistant coach for Albany State University baseball, head coach Scott Hemmings announced. Reynolds will serve as pitching coach for the defending Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) champion Golden Rams.
“We were lucky to find someone with such an impressive resume as Coach Reynolds with it being so late in the summer. Coach Reynolds brings an unbelievable playing resume both at the college level and professional level as well as having both head and assistant coaching experience. He also brings in a large network for our recruiting with the number of contacts both here in the states and in Australia,” Hemmings said. “Coach Reynolds has added a lot of value to our program and I have seen an immediate impact with our pitching staff and their overall development in the four weeks that he has been here.”
Reynolds comes to ASU from Caledonia High School in Greater Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he served as an assistant coach in 2018. He stepped away from the college game in 2015, resigning as head coach of Ohio Christian University after the birth of his twin daughters.
Prior to Ohio Christian, in addition to some high school and private coaching, Reynolds spent time as a pitching coach at Wheaton College in Illinois in 2011, helping guide the pitching staff lower its ERA by more than a run from the year before and striking out more than 200 hitters. He also served as assistant at NAIA program Davenport University in Michigan for one season. Other high school coaching experiences include Lemon Bay High School (Fla.) and The Seven Hills School (Ohio).
A naive of Sydney, Australia, Reynolds came to the U.S. in 2000 to play for Wallace State Community College in Hanceville, Alabama, after graduating from Girraween High School in 1997. At WSCC, he struck out a school single-game record 17 batters in 2001 and posted a 9-1 record for the season with a 0.97 ERA to be named AJCCC MVP and an NJCAA All-American.
Reynolds moved to Georgia the following year to play for then-NCAA DII program Kennesaw State University, where he once again broke the single-game record for strikeouts in a game (18), and then again with 19 in 2003, which tied the Peach Belt Conference record and earned him National PLayer of the Wek honors. His 134 Ks in 103 innings was also a school record. A five-time Peach Belt Conference Pitcher of the Week, Reynolds was twice named the PBC Pitcher of the YEar and earned South Atlantic Region Pitcher of the Year honors and All-America status as a junior and senior. KSU honored his career with induction into the Kennesaw State University Hall of Fame in 2014.
During the summer of 2002, he set the New England Collegiate Baseball LEague season record with a 0.46 ERA and earned Top Pitcher and Top Pro-Prospect honors in the league.
From KSU, he was drafted by the Oakland Athletics in the ninth round of the 2003 MLB Draft and spent three years in the minors before being released in 2003 due to injuries, including Tommy John Surgery.
Reynolds completed his bachelor of science in health and physical education at Kennesaw State University in 2006 and earned a master of arts in coaching and athletic administration from Concordia University Irvine (Calif.) in 2015. He is currently working on his master of science in coaching and exercise science at Concordia-Irvine, which is set to complete in 2019.
He and his wife, Erin, have four daughters, Hannah and Nora (4), Maddy (2) and Claire (1).
Courtesy of Albany State Sports Information