After his second coaching stint at Crestwood High School ended in 2023, longtime Portage County softball Coach LeRoy Moore acknowledged that he pondered whether his coaching career had reached its climax. It turns out he was not finished as a softball coach. In his second season with the Streetsboro Rockets, Moore recorded his 200th career coaching victory.
“It is always an honor to achieve a milestone such as whether it is 100 wins or 200 wins,” Moore said. “I appreciate the opportunity that I have had to be a head coach to achieve that level and it was good to do it this past year in Streetsboro where we really had a successful season this year.”
He becomes the seventh softball coach in Portage County to record 200 career coaching victories. For Moore, who was born and raised in Portage County, he has enjoyed a 13-year-long career as a softball coach in the area where he grew up.
“You grow up in one place and even whether on the field or even in your high school days, you develop competition against the neighboring schools. Even after sports are over, you develop friendships in those communities,” he noted.
The second-year Rockets’ Coach achieved the coaching milestone early in the season when the Rockets overpowered Metro Athletic Conference Rival Cloverleaf 12-2 in six innings on May 13.
Although he was aware that he was one win away from 200 coaching victories, he said that it was an unspoken understanding that he and the players shared. He acknowledged that he was more concerned with seeing how his players responded in their first meeting against the Colts, a year after they suffered a 10-0 defeat in five innings.
“Making up for poor playing that we had the year before and then also an opportunity to make it my 200th win so kind of accomplished two goals there,” he said. “First and foremost, beating them the way we did. We played a good game and won 12-2 and only had to go six innings for the run rule to take effect and making it the 200th victory.”
According to Moore, as much as an honor it was for him to officially achieve 200 career victories, it paled in comparison to Streetsboro having its most successful season in school history by amassing a school record 17 victories.
For Moore, a team accomplishment took precedence over any individual accolades, which has been his mantra throughout his entire coaching career.
Having resided in the Hiram, Mantua and Shalersville communities throughout his life, Moore has embraced being a small-town resident and learning to appreciate the little things in life.
“Even as your family grows and they go off on their own, “experiences or ventures – they really don’t go too far. I have two daughters that I have raised, both of them are still Portage County probably within a seven-mile radius of where I live,” he added.
After 11 years as the Red Devils’ coach, including leading the 2003 team to the Ohio High School Athletic Association Division II state championship, making Crestwood the first Portage County school to ever win a state banner, Moore said that it seemed his coaching career was nearing its end after his second time as Crestwood’s coach ended after the 2023 season.
He added that if he were to continue coaching, he did not want to coach outside of Portage County as he planted so many roots in his hometown and had reached a point in his life where he was not interested in traveling a great distance to take over a new program.
In approximately three weeks after he left Crestwwod, Moore learned about the Streetsboro head coaching position opening and said that he took it as a sign that he still had several more years of coaching left in him.
“It was a blessing that Streetsboro had that opening and a blessing to me that within 24 hours after I did a telephone interview with them, they are presenting the position to me and I said, “Yeah, I am ready to continue,” he said.
While retirement is not on the forefront of his mind, he added that he is now thinking of adding his successor to his coaching staff, although he is not sure who that is, so when it is time to step down, he leaves the program in trusted hands.
Although it has already been 13 years as a softball coach, Moore said that he is far from finished, even after achieving 200 career victories throughout a long and successful coaching tenure across Crestwood and Streetsboro.
