The Hoptown Hoppers have already begun planning for the 2018 summer baseball season and have a new head coach in place. Brock Moss was introduced as the new coach at a Monday press conference. The 27 year-old Moss is the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator at Georgia Highlands College. He is originally from New Iberia, LA and a graduate of Montgomery (TX) High School.
Moss has summer league coaching experience. He was the head coach of the Little River Blue Crabs of the Carolina Shores Collegiate League in Myrtle Beach, SC in the summer of 2016. He led the Blue Crabs to a regular season title with a .750 winning percentage.
Hoppers General Manager John Bruce said the coaching search committee received applications from people in several states with varying degrees of past success. He said they were impressed by the character of Moss and the way he presented himself in the interview.
Moss said he will utilize a recruiting base of the southeastern and central United States and plans to continue successful relationships with schools such as Pepperdine and UNLV that have yielded productive Hopper players in recent years.
Moss has already hit the ground running, putting together a player recruitment plan and securing two assistant coaches. He said Michael Skelly, an assistant coach at Thomas University, and Andrew Patrick of Georgia Southwestern College will be on his coaching staff.
He said he favors a team that combines power and fundamentals at the plate with a staff of strong arms.
Moss becomes the sixth head coach in Hoptown Hopper history and replaces Kierce Kimbel, who stepped down after one year with the Hoppers after taking an assistant coaching job at the University of Kentucky.
The Hoppers won the Ohio Valley League West title in 2017, the first year the OVL played with two four-team divisions. Bruce said the league will use the same format in 2018 with no expansion expected until 2019 at the earliest.
