Story by Gage Johnson
Senior writer
With the 2019 baseball season right around the corner, many things will be different from the program last year, but the biggest change of all comes in the form of the newly hired Head Coach Dan Skirka.
After the dismissal of former Head Coach Kevin Moulder who coached the Racers for four seasons, Skirka was decided upon as the replacement on July 2.
Skirka is no stranger to baseball at the collegiate level. As it does for most coaches, Skirka’s involvement with baseball started athletically, ultimately choosing to play baseball after being a three-sport athlete for two years in high school.
“I went basketball and baseball,” Skirka said. “Really loved basketball, I played that just as much as I played baseball, but I realized being 5 feet 11 inches I had to make a decision.”
From there Skirka headed to Battle Creek, Michigan, to make his first stop in his athletic career at Kellogg Community College. After racking up accolades, including Male-Scholar Athlete of the Year twice and multiple conference awards, Skirka jumped into Division II baseball at Grand Valley State.
He earned First-Team All-Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference honors in his junior year and earned Rawlings/American Baseball Coaches Association All-Region First-Team honors during his senior season at Grand Valley State before jumping into the coaching world.
Despite his success athletically, Skirka knew at the end of the day he wanted to be a coach.
“I knew I wanted to coach way before college,” Skirka said. “I actually went into education and planned on being a teacher and a coach. As I got into college, my coaches and some other guys that I knew said, ‘Hey, you need to think about doing the college route and making a profession out of it,’ and I never really thought about it until some of my mentors mentioned it to me, and I’m glad I did.”
In his fifth year of college, Skirka continued his pursuit of education and coaching by helping coach a Grand Rapids Community College team to the NJCAA World Series. Skirka then got a graduate assistant position at Ouachita Baptist for a season before making his way to Murray State as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator.
Skirka’s first stint with the Racers lasted from 2009-2014. During that time Skirka was able to bring in eight All-OVC selections, one of the eight a 2014 OVC Pitcher of the Year in Brock Downey.
Skirka’s next stop was Walters State Community College, where he spent four seasons as the recruiting coordinator. In his four seasons, Skirka helped send 42 players to Division I schools while delivering another eight to the MLB draft.
When the Murray State job became available, Skirka wasn’t even finished with the season at Walters State. Skirka and the Senators were in the midst of the NJCAA World Series championship game, but once that window closed he and his family were ready to return to the Racers.
“We were actually at the World Series last year out in Colorado when all the news broke and I was getting a lot of text messages and phone calls,” Skirka said. “I said, ‘Man I gotta finish what we’re doing here.’ We had made the Championship game and lost. When I got home from Colorado I sat down with my wife and talked about it, and we were both excited and ready to see what we could do.”
Skirka said the transition for the team has been smooth, and is excited to see how it competes and grows as the year goes along.
“Just compete day in and day out,” Skirka said. “We’re playing against ourselves more than anything. We want to be the best team we can be. We want to reach our potential. There’s a lot of things you can’t control in baseball, so we’re just going to take care of what we can control and if we can look back at the end of the year and say we gave it all we had and reached our potential we’ll be happy.”
Junior outfielder Ryan Perkins is one of the few returning starters from last season’s roster and he said the transition to Skirka and his staff has been seamless.
“They’re more relatable and more interactive with us,” Perkins said. “From the start, it feels like they’ve been here for the three years I’ve been here. They’ve been really into what we were doing and they’ve just been great so far.”
The Racers will take the field for the first time when they hit the road to take on Oral Roberts University at 3 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 15, at J.L. Johnson Stadium.
