Morningside Roots, Omaha Dreams: Mike Clement '02 returns to the CWS

Mike Clement is glad he never passed up the chance to become a Morningside baseball player.

Clement, a 2002 alumnus now in his 12th season at Ole Miss as the team's hitting coach and third base coach, returns to the Midwest this week with the University of Mississippi baseball team to play in the Men's College World Series, which begins Friday in Omaha. It marks the seventh time Ole Miss has qualified for the CWS and its first appearance since 2022, when the Rebels won the national championship.

Clement arrived at Morningside in 2001 after two years at the junior college level, and he first learned of the school through his best friend, Dave Miriovsky '01. The two grew up together in Marshalltown, Iowa, and Miriovsky sold Clement on the idea of being teammates one more time.

"The allure of getting to play with Dave was a huge thing," Clement said. "The other main factor was getting to play for Jim Scholten. My father was a high school baseball coach and we had a relationship with Coach Scholten, and I knew they had a good team coming back and there was an opportunity there for me that I couldn't pass up."

Clement's coaching career began as a graduate assistant under Scholten, but it was playing for him that helped shape the current Rebels associate head coach into the man and coach he is today.

"The thing I remember the most about him is just how competitive he was, and it didn't matter if it was a practice setting or a game setting — that guy wanted to win," Clement said. "He didn't overlook the character standpoint, maybe with the exception of me, but he put together a really good roster of really good people."

On the field, Clement made his mark. He hit .291 in 2001, then followed with a .403 average and 46 RBIs in 2002, when Morningside competed at the Division II level. It isn't the games he remembers most, though — it's the moments off the field.

"The wins and losses start to fade a little bit, but the relationships and those bus rides, because we had some long ones — you're talking about going to Grand Forks and Fargo, St. Cloud and all of those places — the bus rides and the van rides, that's what I remember the most from a relationship standpoint," Clement said.

This week's trip marks Clement's second return to the Midwest in three weeks. During the regional rounds, Ole Miss was assigned to the Lincoln Regional to face teams such as Nebraska. With Lincoln not far from Siouxland, Clement reconnected with familiar faces from his Morningside days, including B.J. Koch '03.

For Clement, the journey has always come full circle in the Midwest — the place where it all began.

"Anytime your season ends here, you've done something right," Clement said. "So we're excited to get this thing started, be back in the Midwest, and hopefully end the same way it did in 2022."