Rob Ehlers, who won the River States Conference's Coach of the Year honor in his first official season as a head coach, enters his third year as the Shawnee State head baseball coach in 2025. Shawnee State has gone 23-7 in the months of April and May with Ehlers leading the charge over the last two seasons.
Year 2 of the Ehlers Era saw Shawnee State improve further -- as the Bears improved to 29-16 to post back-to-back winning seasons. Like 2024, Shawnee State ended the year on a high note as Ehlers' group won 11 consecutive games between April 8 to May 4.
In all, a total of seven everyday players hit above .330, including Diego Mendoza (.382), Zach Gaspar (.378) and Tyler Lund (.370), who each enjoyed career-best seasons at the plate. Four players also posted an .OPS of over 1.000, including Mendoza, Gaspar, Mason Reid and Jace Parnin, the latter of whom obtained River States Conference Player of the Week honors twice and NAIA National Player of the Week honors once after Parnin hit a perfect 1.000 in Shawnee State's series sweep of Rio Grande, where Parnin reached base in 17 consecutive plate appearances.
During the course of the 2025 season, Parnin, along with Shawnee State infielder Wyatt Haupt and Shawnee State pitcher Ethan Ison, won RSC Player of the Week honors. A total of six players, including Gaspar, Mendoza, Lund, Reid, Hunter Warner and Nolan Tressler, were all named as either Second-Team All-RSC or Third-Team All-RSC honorees.
Academically, the Shawnee State baseball program continues to excel group-wise -- as four players, including Gaspar, Ison, Parnin and Carson Wireman were named as CSC Academic All-District honorees. Gaspar later became just the second individual in program history to be named an Academic All-American early in July, when Gaspar was honored by the College Sports Communicators national staff as a Second-Team CSC-NAIA Academic All-American.
In his first season as the head skipper at Shawnee State, Ehlers' bulldog tenacity and calculated coaching immediately paid dividends as SSU, who went 8-37 in 2023, more than tripled its win amount by going 26-21 in 2024 -- and posted its first winning season in 10 years.
While accomplishing the above record, SSU also scored its first series victory over a NAIA Top-25 opponent in 10 years, posted its most runs in a conference game (25), a doubleheader (43) and a series (57) in program history and won a program-record 12 consecutive games.
Player-wise, Noah Sniadach (.395, 18 2B, 4 3B, 5 HR, 41 RBI) and Nolan Tressler (.388, 18 2B, 2 3B, 9 HR, 56 RBI) enjoyed career-best seasons, with Tressler ripping off a 27-consecutive game hitting streak. Eric Oakes earned First-Team All-RSC honors as a two-way talent, and Shawnee State freshman pitcher Carson Wireman (5-0, two saves, 2.08 ERA, 56-and-a-third innings pitched) posted the lowest ERA by any Shawnee State pitcher in the last 10 seasons.
Academically, 11 individuals were named as River States Conference Scholar-Athletes, with six individuals named as NAIA Scholar-Athletes. Oakes, Sniadach, Zach Gaspar, Ethan Ison and Hunter Warner were each named as College Sports Communicators Academic All-District honorees.
Initially a graduate of Denison-Schleswig High School in Denison, Iowa, Ehlers ultimately transferred to Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and graduated in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and sociology of education.
In 2008, Ehlers ultimately became a graduate assistant for the Central Methodist (Mo.) baseball program, and in 2010, obtained a master’s degree from the institution before heading off to Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta, Ga.
On May 20, 2014, Ehlers officially returned to Central Methodist as an assistant baseball coach – and began building the Eagles into a national powerhouse as the school’s infield coach, recruiting coordinator and head junior varsity coach.
From there, the only losing season that Ehlers experienced was his first season on the staff in 2015, when the program went 26-28 – a five-win improvement from the year prior in 2014. The program then
made a colossal jump to a 44-17 overall mark and won the Heart of America Athletic Conference Championship in 2016 – beginning a string of seven consecutive NAIA Tournament appearances that are ongoing. In five of those years, Central Methodist either won a regular season or conference tournament championship.
While the crown jewel of Ehlers’ on-field success was that 49-8 campaign that featured a sweep of the Heart of America’s Regular Season and Conference Tournament crowns to go along with its NAIA National Runner-Up finish in 2021, the Iowa native helped build sustained success as the program ultimately went 305-113 from 2016 to 2023, with just one season – the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign that cancelled the rest of the season from mid-March onward – featuring less than 35 wins. Ehlers earned 2021 NAIA Assistant Coach of the Year honors as a result of helping Central Methodist collect a NAIA National Runner-Up showing.
Academically, Ehlers led a program in 2016 that achieved a GPA of 3.0, with the Central Methodist program achieving a cumulative GPA above 3.0 again in 2019 (3.14). Athletically, Ehlers has developed 49 All-Conference players, three Heart of America Pitchers of the Year, two conference players of the year, and 10 NAIA All-Americans.
“We want every baseball player to earn a degree from Shawnee State University," Ehlers said. "Athletically, our goals are to enter the River States Conference this year and quickly become a team that is annually at the top of the conference standings while competing for national tournament berths."
Ehlers resides in South Shore, Ky. with his wife, Leta.
