Creston Baseball hires CCHS alumnus to lead its team

Creston Community Schools announced Brandon Phipps, a 2014 graduate of CCHS, is returning to school as its head baseball coach.

“One of the things that he really showed us last year when he was hired to come back he volunteered with our baseball program, he coached all summer for free and really showed that he wanted to be part of our program,” Activities Director Scott Driskell said. “He really wants to build something with baseball we’re excited to have him. We had good candidates, good interviews and Brandon rose to the top through that process.”

Phipps, a Creston native, is a graduate of Northwest Missouri State, where he ran track and cross country. During college, he assisted then head CCHS baseball coach Steve Birchard for four seasons.

“I got really good coaching experience with coach Birchard while I was still in college,” said Phipps.

In Missouri, Phipps served as head basketball coach at West Nodaway School District. During his time there, he ran the strength and conditioning program and served as athletic director.

Phipps has a bachelor’s degree in physical education and a master’s in applied health sports science. He holds a specialist degree in K-12 educational leadership.

“Right now, I’m just focusing on teaching and coaching,” Phipps said. “I know I have a lot of degrees, but I just want to be the best teacher and coach I can be.”

Still to be finalized are Drew Dornack, assistant varsity coach, Chris Tibbals who will assist with JV and varsity, freshman coach Joey Mitchell, and Bryce Schafer and Tony Naubaure, who will coach seventh and eighth grade teams.

Phipps said he’s looking forward to leading a strong baseball program in Creston.

“The biggest thing is I just want to get that buy in from the kids and continue to grow as a program, develop all the players that we have from last years team, but also just instill the culture we want moving forward,” he said.

Softball

Mike McCabe will return as Creston’s head coach for the 2022 season.

McCabe has been Creston’s head coach since 2003. Prior to that, he served as assistant coach for 10 years under former head coach Ron “Fox” Clinton.

“I’ve been around awhile,” he chuckled.

McCabe retired at the end of the academic year in 2021 as physical education teacher from the Creston district, but because of IPERS rules, he was forced to leave his post as coach as well. After his retirement from CCSD, McCabe was hired to teach physical education part time at St. Malachy.

“So I wasn’t able to finish the last year, the last two weeks of the season,” McCabe said. “The rules are that I can not reapply ... they don’t want people retiring, taking their pension and then double-dipping.”

McCabe had to wait four months to reapply, which he did.

“I just hated the way last year had to end,” said McCabe. “My kids were wonderful and my assistants were wonderful as far as understanding and letting me have the opportunity to retire.”

McCabe said he’s looking forward to the new season. He will be joined this season by his former athlete-turned-assistant Teri Keeler, who has assisted McCabe for nearly 19 years.

“We’ve got a great group of kids coming back. We only lost one senior last year, so we look forward to a good nucleus of kids coming back and getting started with our winter workouts, which started last week.”

CNA Sports Reporter Jared Larson contributed to this story.