Ryan Brownlee: What’s your day-to-day like at the Reds Youth Academy?
Kevin Coe: We start with meetings and administrative work in the morning. I oversee all the programming at the facility, which includes camps, clinics, and scheduling practices for our 21 teams. We’re open six days a week, and our teams usually practice from 5:30 to 9:00 p.m. every night. In the mornings, I run individual training sessions for kids who want extra work. During the summer, I get there even earlier to watch our high school kids play or travel to youth games. It’s a busy schedule, but when you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like work.
RB: How does the setup at the Reds Academy compare to the White Sox ACE Program?
KC: It’s completely different. The facility is a game-changer. We have indoor turf, batting cages, a weight room, and four outdoor turf fields. When teams from Chicago come play tournaments and stop by, they’re amazed. They say, “If this was in Chicago, it would never close.” Our program is called Reds Nike RBI, but we also enter elite travel tournaments under that name. The structure is similar to what we built with the White Sox ACE Program. When I was asked to come here, they wanted me to replicate what we did in Chicago, and that was one of the reasons I took the job.
RB: What did you learn from your time with the White Sox ACE Program?
KC: A lot. It was a grassroots program, built from the ground up with Kenny Fullman and Nathan Durst. When guys like Blake Hickman and Devin Williams started committing to Power 5 schools, it changed everything. Suddenly, every kid believed they could do it too. Our 2011-2014 teams were relentless—they called themselves “Team No Days Off” because they literally played baseball seven days a week. They lived in the cages, on the field, and in the weight room. Some of them didn’t even have girlfriends because they were that locked in.
RB: How have things changed in the recruiting landscape since those early ACE days?
KC: It’s completely different now. Before, I could call a coach, send a video, and within a couple of days, a kid had an offer. That’s not the case anymore. Coaches are evaluating differently. You have to be more proactive—recording at-bats, tracking growth, and consistently sending updates to coaches. A big part of my job now is educating parents and players on how to be their own recruiters.
RB: What’s the biggest difference between training baseball and softball players?
KC: The biggest difference is pitching. Pitching runs the game in softball, so you have to know how to teach it properly. But hitting and fielding mechanics? They’re the same. I actually use slap drills from softball as a timing mechanism for my baseball players. They don’t even realize they’re doing a softball drill, but when they start feeling their legs and rhythm better, they always ask to do it again.
RB: You’ve always been big on coaching education. Why is that so important?
KC: It’s professional development. No matter how much you played or didn’t play, you have to keep learning. The game is constantly evolving—AI, metrics, biomechanics—you have to understand it all. I’ve had Division I coaches tell me they’ve been tricked by recruiting videos because a kid looked great in a choreographed setting, but once he got on campus, he couldn’t play. If you’re not learning as a coach, you’re doing your players a disservice.
RB: You’ve impacted a lot of kids. How does it feel to see so many come back and coach?
KC: That’s the most rewarding part. We didn’t just develop players—we developed future coaches and leaders. I still get calls from guys who played in our program telling me how much they appreciate what we did for them. Just the other day, Troy Fullman called me and said, “Can you believe how many of our former players are now coaching?” That’s what it’s all about—creating a coaching tree that keeps giving back to the game.