N.C. A&T baseball coach Keith Shumate has announced that he will step down as the Aggies head coach at the of the current college baseball season….
Coach Shumate has been a fixture within the Aggies’ athletics department and worked hard to bring many local players into the N.C. A&T baseball program….
Coach Shumate gave a lot of kids a chance and he had a talented group to play for him including Charlie Gamble IV, Jason Battle, Jeremy Jones, Nick Rogers, Esterlin Paulino, Lester Rivenbark, Dusty Shutt and many others with so many of them coming out of the Guilford County Schools like Gamble(Southern Guilford), Rogers(Northwest Guilford), Paulino(Southwest Guilford) plus Rivenbark and Shutt(Grimsley)…….
CLICK HERE and Jeff Mills from the News and Record has much more on a coach that made a difference in many local kids lives and he helped many of them reach the professional level along the way…..
I met Keith when Kory started playing baseball about 10 years ago at Pleasant Garden Community Center. What a great person, family, and coach! He will be sorely missed at A&T. Best wishes from your friends in SE Guilford County!
Coach Shumate is first class!! A great baseball mind and even better at dealing with young, confused kids, struggling with this game of failure.
I hope coach finds a great place to continue to do his thing!!
Does anyone know who would be a good fit to replace Shumate? You got Ijames, Carlyle just to name a few local guys who might be a good fit…..
They should look at Coach Barrow over at GTCC…young guy, good coach, very good recruiter, and has won with absolutely nothing…he would be a great fit if he would leave.
Local – I agree that Coach Barrow is a good coach – but to say he has won with absolutely nothing is look at the talent on his roster for this year. Many local kids who are doing great things…………..That’s why his record is > 21 – 12 this year…………………….
I was referring to the fact that Coach Barrow has no facilities, limited budget, etc…he is a very good recruiter (which I mentioned before) and it is really amazing that he gets good players to come there. He definitely has gotten great players to come there and they are doing well this year.
It’s must be alot easier to recruit players to a junior college than a four year school, way different requirements academicly and financially.
That being said, I still see that Coacj Barrow is doing a great job at GTCC.
Anybody know what Coach Shumate is going to do next?
I wouldn’t say it’s easier to recruit junior college players, especially to GTCC when you have Pitt CC, Louisburg, Lenoir CC, etc that all have fields/facilities, money/support, and tradition. For anyone to get the quality of players that Barrow has gotten to come to GTCC is nothing short of a miracle in my opinion.
shumate’s recruiting at a&t is closer to a miracle than barrow. minus the lack of facilities gtcc is a cake walk.
It’s $500 to play at GTCC………..how hard is it to recruit players??? That’s a piece of cake compared to what Shumate Gaski Black have to deal with in the area.
Black has the hardest sell in Guilford without a doubt, but to say Gaski has it tough proves you know NOTHING. UNCG should get great players based on school and facilities alone. Shumate had obstacles, but convincing a kid to go to a juco is a job in itself, much less to a juco with no facilities, no history, no dorms, and is exactly the same price as those jucos who DO have them is hardly a cake walk. Not to mention the stereotype- especially from the local kids- that comes with going to jucos (for dummys only). It’s all relevant. The kids who want to/have to go to juco look at ALL of them- and there are a bunch of them in NC. GTCC is lacking severely in what recruits want compared to pretty much all the others. Barrow has done a good job of selling his product at GTCC to recruits. He has gotten some kids, especially local ones, that are top notch players and who are academically eligible for NCAA.
Not making light of what Shumate did, I admit it was probably a chore and he did well in getting what he did, but I would hardly say it is a cake walk to get kids at GTCC. Barrow would do well at A&T.
it will be very hard for ANYONE, especially local, to fill Shumates shoes. Personally I would like to see someone from out of the area fill the spot so that the loca guys that go to a&t are more likely to end up at gtcc. If gtcc can continue to get the local guys they’re getting now plus some of the guys they were losing to a&t they could make some noise on a national level.
To say barrow is a amazing recruiter is pushing it a bit, he brings in so many players because the gtcc roster is always cut in half when grades come out.
all of Barrow’s former players I know sing his praises. I only know of one who has said bad things about him and that was because he didn’t get a D1 offer- even though that particular player had at least one scholarship offer to a great D2 program. May want to check your facts about roster being cut in half when grades come out as well…I know for a fact that is not true, especially over the past 2 years. Get your facts right before you decide to bash someone. GTCC baseball team’s transfer rate is 92% per their website. He is obviously doing something right. Easy to hide behind a screen name and bash someone.
Really……..Are you REALLY that confused? You have no idea about college recruiting! Gaski doesnt have it tough? Are you serious?? Should I mention that he has to recruit against UNC, STATE,ECU,WAKE,Wilmington,Charlotte.A&T,Duke,App, just to name a few and they have football programs!! What kid can Gaski get after all those schools recruit their kids?? You think any kid will pick UNCG over any of those schools??? Why would I go to UNCG when those other schools are recruiting me with football programs…..GTCC what a joke how many big time scholar kids go to GTCC??? Kids go to GTCC not because they want to…..bc they have to and it’s cheap point blank!
I bet if you went through the GTCC roster and asked the kids themselves that MOST of the kids would tell you they went there because they wanted to, not because they HAD to. Most of them had options. UNCG should outrecruit Wake, UNCW, UNCC, Duke, App, A&T, and most of the others (probably not ECU or UNC) if Gaski’s reputation wasn’t so bad…but, that’s another story.
Alumni- you don’t know anything. You would choose one school over another because they have a football team? seriously? If some recruit picked a school over mine simply because they had a FOOTBALL team, then I would question how serious that kid is about BASEBALL (the sport he was recruited for).
You also know NOTHING about juco baseball. More and more kids are opting to take the jc route for any number of reasons. Yes, grade improvement cab be one reason. However, it is not the ONLY reason kids choose this route. Maybe it’s money, maybe it’s exposure, maybe it’s maturity…jc is not just for dummies that want to learn a trade any more- welcome to the 21st century.