Lee Rogers resigns as Asbury baseball coach

I spoke with Lee Rogers at length today, and he confirmed that he did resign as head coach of the Asbury College baseball team July 21. He said that it was a “financial situation,” meaning that the school was not ready to give him the salary he felt was appropriate for the job.

When Rogers was hired in 2006, the baseball team had been defunct for several years, and the job was part-time. He said he was not promised full-time status, but he hoped that Athletics Director Gary Kempf would be able to persuade the powers-that-be to reevaluate that after the first season.

“You think, if I have a good year, and I show them that the program is maybe further along than they thought it would be after the first year — bringing as many players and us being pretty competitive in the first year — I was hoping they would make me full-time,” he said.

Kempf was able to get Rogers full-time status a couple weeks ago, but the job came with several more responsibilities, including being groundskeeper of sorts — tending to all outdoor facilities including baseball, soccer and softball fields, tennis courts and the cross-country course. Lee didn’t feel like the package the school offered him was sufficient for doing those duties on top of coaching, scouting and recruiting. He didn’t give specifics on the package except that it did include insurance, but he called the whole thing “below-average.”

Lee stressed over and over that he had no hard feelings toward the school, and he really enjoyed his time there; it was just a matter of two sides not being able to agree on a contract. He said he would be more than happy to help the new coach (expect that announcement very soon) get to know the facilities and the players.

Rogers said he will begin looking for other coaching opportunities on the high school or college level and will return to working at Garden Springs Elementary School in Lexington where he works with special-needs students.

“I’ll just have to sit down and do some figuring, if coaching is what I’m supposed to be doing or if the good Lord wants me staying home and being with (his wife) Beth more or what,” he said

Asbury has now lost coaches for men’s basketball, women’s basketball, men’s and women’s tennis, cross-country and baseball as well as the sports information director in the past six months. It’s going to be a new-look season for Asbury next year with volleyball coach Craig Mosqueda, swimming coach Dorothy Kempf, men’s soccer coach Josh Oakley and women’s soccer coach Paul Nesselroade the only coaches returning from last year.

Rogers is probably going to be the vacancy that hurts the most, though. Bringing in the players to go 18-25 and finish third in the KIAC in a team’s first year is not an easy assignment at all. The fact that there were only two contributers on that team, sophomore catcher Zach Monroe and junior left fielder Slade Halvaksz, that weren’t freshmen is even more surprising. There are also 15 incoming freshmen signed to play next season, and Lee said he thinks the team could go into the conference next year as the preseason #1 team. That’s a really tough loss for the school.

I’ll have more on this for The Journal this week, possibly including who will take over the position.