Joe Medlen will be the first to say that he has bled red and white for his alma matter Perry since he went to school there. The longtime Pirates’ coach’s retirement from coaching high school softball lasted all of one year as he will return to the Chagrin Valley Conference as the Berkshire Badgers’ new softball coach.
“It wasn’t hard,” the Badgers’ first-year coach told The Weekly Villager. “I have a love and passion for the game that is beyond reproach. I just love the game. I love helping the student-athletes, especially the female student-athletes who a lot of times get overlooked.”
After nine years with his alma matter, Medlen retired from his post at Perry after the 2022 season but returned to Lake County softball in 2023 to serve as Madison’s junior varsity coach. After his one-year stint with the Blue Streaks, Medlen said he believed his head coaching days were behind them.
After longtime Badgers’ softball Coach Dave List retired following the 2024 campaign, Berkshire had a replacement lined up, but those plans fell through. Medlen said that former Badgers’ softball coach Tony Scibelli reached out to him and convinced him to come out of retirement.
According to Medlen, he had already been considering the possibility of coming out of retirement and looked at a few assistant or junior varsity coaching opportunities. He acknowledged after nine years of being a head coach, it was tough to imagine himself serving as an assistant coach.
“After I came out and saw the facilities, saw everything that it was about and then started meeting other coaches, it fit in to what I really liked because I am big on creating a family atmosphere with sports and caring about each other and the community involvement,” he added. “It was really really easy. I appreciate the opportunity and am looking forward to it, there are a lot of great kids here.”
Medlen said that one of the biggest things that drew him to Berkshire was the sense of community. Although Burton is a smaller community than Perry or Madison, he enjoyed the fact that seemingly almost everybody knows everyone.
“I walk through, and people already know who I am and that is the weirdest feeling not knowing a soul,” he noted. “I have never had that. Everybody has been so welcoming, coming up and introducing themselves. “It is awesome how everybody knows everybody, and I actually use that to talk to the girls.”
Although he is coaching a smaller program, Medlen said that he was pleasantly surprised by the depth of the Badgers’ program, which is already rivaling the number of players he had during his Perry coaching days.
“If I didn’t know better, I would say that these girls have played travel ball,” he said. “They are really good athletes between playing volleyball, soccer, and when you are a good athlete sometimes all you need is some coaching and direction of our senior group. The five seniors that will be starters, they have played forever in the game and are just tremendous athletes, so they are going to be a little better and stronger than what people think.”
Medlen’s rise as a softball coach began when he started coaching his daughter’s softball team. He had already coached his son’s baseball team but switched to softball when his daughter started playing. After several years of coaching travel softball, Medlen was hired as Perry’s softball coach in 2014.
“It was the greatest opportunity Athletic Director TJ Rockwell could have given me,” he said. “I was extremely excited about that, and I never let up there. It is obviously where I graduated from, my kids graduated from, and my wife graduated from so we still live here in Perry. I have a lot of roots in Perry and have a lot of family that has graduated so it is home for us.”
In only nine seasons at the helm, Medlen led the Pirates to six CVC Lake Division banners and compiled a conference winning streak of 78 games, three Ohio School Athletic Association Division II sectional championships, three district titles and one regional championship appearance.
Despite having great memories coaching at his alma matter, Medlen said he stepped down after 2022 because he felt it was time for a new voice in the dugout.
Now in his second act, Medlen feels a renewed sense of purpose with Berkshire as he returns to action in the CVC.
“I appreciate the CVC,” he said. “It is a lot of small communities again and sometimes it just doesn’t get that coaching and notoriety that it deserves. The girls are incredible. The CVC is very welcoming; again, they are a solid program. Even in the future, we are welcoming in some really big programs next year and the following year and it is obviously a place that other teams want to be in.”
