Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Cameron Shares Perspectives On Return To Tiger Baseball
PRAIRIE GROVE — Enterprise-Leader sports editor Mark Humphrey recently interviewed Prairie Grove head baseball coach Mitch Cameron, who returned to the program with his hiring by the school board May 21 following four seasons at Rogers Heritage. The following is a transcript of part one from that interview.
WCEL: “There was a young man here at Prairie Grove named Jacob Kahl, who played baseball and whom you probably had in the classroom. Jacob liked football so much he said, ‘Football is a gift from God.’ We have these divine gifts like baseball cause people can get so much out of it, like Logan Gragg, now; and Jalen Beeks and Ty Tice, getting to play their careers and it was a gift to them. Can you put it in words, the gift that baseball is to you?”
Mitch Cameron: “I don’t even know where to start. Baseball has just been from when I was younger and I look back to my high school years baseball was something that it’s what I was. It’s who I was. Obviously, growing up I learned it can’t be who I am, it’s just a sport. But growing up, shoot, when baseball rolled around, the girlfriends left, and it was just this because growing up it didn’t matter what it was because baseball was my future. I had aspirations to grow up and play Major League Baseball and all that stuff. There came a point where you realize it wasn’t in the cards, but I always knew I was going to be a coach. I always knew. Baseball it’s always there for you. It teaches you so much about life and facing adversity. It’s a game of failure where you have to come back from that day in and day out and learn to deal with that. And you know life throws it at you every day. So for this game, it teaches you all of that. This game has given back so much to me. It’s what I do is try to give that back to our kids.
WCEL: “You had to give up some things in order to make the return back to Prairie Grove. You had a very good senior class coming back you would have been coaching with a major potential at Rogers Heritage next year.”
Mitch Cameron: “We had nine seniors that were coming back that all had started since they were freshmen. We had some juniors mixed in and we had a couple of sophomores that had some potential and we had a couple freshmen that played this year that are going to be really good on the mound. So, it was a big decision to leave that because you grow those kids from when they’re freshmen and you feel like, ‘OK, this is the year we’re going to win.’ And, for this to come up and to make that decision, you know, it wasn’t an easy one. But, it was one that I knew was best for my family. It was one that God brought me back here for a reason. We prayed and it’s been going on since March, the decision. And when it came down to it at the very end, there were things that he was telling us that said, ‘You know what? We’re meant to be back at Prairie Grove and come back home.’”
WCEL: “Going from a 6A school, which is at the top of the classification in Arkansas, there’s probably a little bit of a pay cut involved, but it’s something you were willing to take.”
Mitch Cameron: “It is, but you know at the end of the day it’s not about money, it’s not about the size of the school or how big the place is, it’s about are you happy? And I was happy there, but it’s the overall life. My family’s here, to be able to spend more time with them and the community, here, it’s a different feeling. It’s all that stuff, it brings back a different animal. The money and all that stuff, it’s great, but at the end of the day none of that matters. It matters about family, it matters about my kids and my wife and being closer to them. And having a community here that supports me helped tremendously to be able to come back and be welcomed like that. All of that played a role in that and so the money and the prestige of coaching at 6A level, once upon a time when I was younger, yes, that was a big deal; and so looking back on it at the end of the day it’s about impacting lives and you do that no matter where you are. You get the same amount of kids, and so to be able to develop those kids is where God wants me and so as long as I’m doing that I don’t care about anything else. I’m around my family and I have my faith and everything’s good.”
WCEL: “Let’s talk about your wife, Mallory. Sometimes coach’s wives have maybe the biggest challenges. They hear, maybe criticisms in the stands that the coach might not hear because he’s tied up in the game. They get exposed to those types of things. They may be the sounding-board when you come home from a tough loss if it goes wrong in the last inning and so forth.”
Mitch Cameron: “She has to keep these two kids. Baseball is year-round and especially when I was at Heritage getting home at 6:30 at night and having the kids already fed and of course she works, too. She’s a teacher full-time and to be able to come home and bathe them and feed them. Then I come home and just get to play and she does all the hard stuff. That’s not easy either. We do a great job with our family to teach our kids that we only worry about things that we can control. It’s just a game. At the end of the day, it’s just a game that we play to grow and to have fun, but we want to win. Things don’t go our way sometimes, but growing you got to learn to separate this from family. I go home and I may think about those losses and I may stay up to midnight, but I make sure that everybody’s in bed and do all that before I get back into my books. Learn to separate that stuff. We worry about what we can control and we can’t control wins and losses. We can control getting our kids better from one day to the next. If I can sit every day at home and think, ‘Did our kids get better today?’”