CVCC’s Adam Thomas closes in on wins record

Adam Thomas wasn’t sure he wanted to be a baseball coach. Seventeen years later he is still not sure.

Thomas, who leads Chattahoochee Valley Community College into the Junior College Athletic Association World Series on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo.,, played the game growing up then in high school at Smiths Station and in college at CVCC and Montevallo.

After graduating from Montevallo, he returned to CVCC as an assistant coach. A short time later, longtime coach B.R. Johnson retired and turned the program over to Thomas, who was the youngest coach in the history of the Alabama Community College Conference.

Since taking over prior to the 2000 season, Thomas has won 630 games — tying the school mark set by Johnson.

With two wins in the JUCO World Series, Thomas would own the record outright.

“I don’t know what to think about that,” Thomas said. “It is weird. That was my mentor. That was my coach.

“I knew this question was coming at some point. It is just weird. I always thought this is his program. I guess now it is my program to some degree. But it is our program, to be able to catch your mentor, to be this close.

“That guy is a hall of famer. He is a legend in this league. It is humbling I can tell you that.”

Slow start

It didn’t appear Thomas would be near Johnson’s record after his first two seasons. He went 14-40 the first year and 23-28 the second. But by the third season, he had led the Pirates to a .500 record at 28-28.

The breakthrough came in the 2003 season when the Pirates went 41-19 ans made the ACCC tournament. CVCC has returned to the postseason every season since then.

But it wasn’t until the 2014 season that the Pirates finally won that elusive first ACCC championship under Thomas.

Now, the Pirates have won three straight ACCC championships and will start play Saturday in its third straight JUCO World Series. CVCC faces Harford (Md.) at 2 p.m.

Catcher JT Thomas (no relation) is hoping the Pirates can get Thomas the record.

“Coach Thomas is a great coach,” JT Thomas said. “Coming to Chatt Valley was one of the best decisions I ever made. … He knows so much about the game.

“All the wins he has gotten have been well-deserved. He has had some great teams, but he wouldn’t have had those great teams if he wasn’t a great coach.”

Nearing the end?

While Thomas has enjoyed great success, he has viewed that success much differently in the past few years.

For the first 14 years of his coaching career, the job was everything to him. He allowed the outcome of each game to define his mood.

Thomas said one day during the summer of 2013 he realized that his son was 14. He started wondering how many of his son’s special events he had missed over the years.

“I spent a lot of time making this the most important thing in my life,” Thomas said during an interview prior to the start of the 2015 season. “And it kind of come to a head in the summer of 2013. I got to a point where I didn’t know if I could do it anymore, so I took about 2 1/2 weeks off and did some soul-searching.

“I told myself I was going to find a way to not make this the most important thing in my life or start looking for something else.”

It is perhaps ironic that CVCC has enjoyed its greatest success after Thomas’ transformation.

Thomas hinted last season that the day is coming when he will walk away and find something else to do.

“I don’t want to ride that roller coaster for something that is really not that important,” Thomas said in 2015. “And I don’t mean my job or these kids. I am talking about big picture things. I like helping people and helping kids. That is the reason I am still here. But there is coming a day, maybe at the end of this season or maybe 10 years from now. But I am going to get to a point, or I am getting closer to the point there are other things out there.

“I love baseball. I love Chattahoochee Valley. I love it all. I don’t mean like another job, that is not what I mean. But there are bigger and better things out there.”

This story was originally published May 27, 2016 at 2:49 PM with the headline "CVCC’s Adam Thomas closes in on wins record."