Drury University Baseball Camps
Head Coach
Mark Stratton
Head Coach
Few start-up athletic programs in the country can boast of opening with six straight winning seasons like the Drury baseball Panthers of head coach Mark Stratton.
The Panthers will enter the 2012-13 campaign coming off a 28-22 mark, including a fourth trip to the Great Lakes Valley Conference post-season tournament in the last six years and a third straight trip overall, just a year after a 35-19 finish, setting a school record for victories in a season.
Stratton now owns a 175-134 in the six seasons since the Drury baseball program was revived after three decades of dormancy as the Panthers continue to etch themselves among the GLVC favorites and contenders for NCAA Division II post-season bids on an annual basis.
In 2007, his first season as the Panthers head baseball coach and Drury's first intercollegiate season since 1974, Stratton led the Panthers to a 33-24 overall record and a Great Lakes Valley Conference post-season tournament championship. The Panthers advanced to the NCAA-II North Central Regional, where sixth-seeded Drury posted a 2-2 mark before being eliminated as one of the final 24 teams still playing in the country despite featuring a squad with just two seniors.
Stratton's Panthers completed the 2008 campaign with a 27-22 overall mark and just missed a second straight berth in the GLVC Tournament with a 15-14 league mark. A year later, Drury compiled a 26-24 campaign, including a 15-12 league record before finishing 26-23 in 2010.
Stratton is a 1977 graduate of Southwest Missouri State University who received his masters from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1981. He began his coaching career as an assistant to Don Provance at Glendale in 1982, and held that position until he replaced the retiring Provance in 1993.
In 13 seasons as the Glendale High School Falcons’ head coach, Stratton’s teams amassed a record of 244-154 and won four district and three Ozark Conference titles. In all, he sent 30 Falcons on to college scholarships.
Stratton also coached the Glendale Merchants American Legion baseball squad from 1988-2002, compiling a 421-243 mark and winning a state championship in 1997.
Stratton and wife Gay have been married for 38 years and have four children – sons Brian, Kevin and Chip and daughter Sara, who played four seasons for the vaunted Drury Lady Panthers’ women’s basketball program.
