In his third season as an assistant coach, and sixth with the Yellow Jacket baseball program, is Tom Kinkelaar, a former college teammate of Georgia Tech head coach Danny Hall and the Yellow Jackets’ pitching instructor.
Kinkelaar took over as the pitching coach prior to the 2008 season after spending his first three years on the Flats as the Yellow Jackets’ director of baseball operations.
Well-respected by his players and fellow coaches alike, Kinkelaar was responsible for the development of five freshmen – more than one-third of the entire pitching staff – in his first year directing the Yellow Jacket hurlers. One of those newcomers, right-handed starter Deck McGuire, became the first Yellow Jacket pitcher in five years to earn Freshman All-America accolades while another member of his starting staff, junior David Duncan, became the first Tech pitcher to receive all-ACC recognition since 2005.
Kinkelaar’s first pitching staff made an immediate impact in 2008, turning in back-to-back shutouts to begin a season for the first time since 1925. Those two shutouts were followed by a one-run outing to help Tech to the fewest runs given up in a three-game series in nearly 99 years. His squad combined for five shutouts on the season, the most since Tech’s 2002 College World Series campaign.
Kinkelaar brings a wealth of experience to the coaching staff, as he has served in various coaching capacities over the last 30 years. Prior to 2008, his last collegiate coaching stint came at his alma mater, Miami (Ohio), where he served as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator from 1996-99. Working primarily with the RedHawk pitching staff, Kinkelaar had 12 pitchers drafted into professional baseball during his three years in Oxford. He had four drafted following his first year at Georgia Tech.
Prior to his arrival on the Flats, Kinkelaar completed a successful four-year stint as a teacher and head basketball coach at Wakefield High School in Raleigh, N.C., where he led the Wolverines to the North Carolina 4A state championship in 2004 just four years after the school opened its doors. Kinkelaar was named Wakefield’s first basketball coach in 2000 after spending two years as the head basketball coach at Lemon-Monroe High School in Monroe, Ohio from 1999-2000.
Kinkelaar spent over 20 years within the high school systems in North Carolina, Ohio and Illinois teaching business, accounting and economics but turned his attention back to teaching baseball in 2008, a subject that he excelled in during his four-year stint as a pitcher on the Miami (Ohio) team from 1973-77.
A fourth-round draft pick of the New York Mets in the 1973 Major League Baseball draft, Kinkelaar went on to pitch four years in the RedHawk program before earning his degree in education in 1977.
He spent the next 19 years coaching and teaching in the Illinois and North Carolina High School Systems, including stints at Mundelein High School in Mundelein, Ill. from 1977-80 and at Sanderson (1980-93) and Leesville (1993-94) High Schools in Raleigh. From 1994-96, Kinkelaar was the head basketball coach at New Hanover High School in Wilmington while serving as the volunteer assistant baseball coach at UNC Wilmington.
Kinkelaar is married to the former Margaret Kerr, and has one daughter, Sara.
