By Athletic Communications Assistant Alex McKeon

BEREA, Ohio – Basketball in the Ohio Athletic Conference features some of the very best in Division III and takes a deft hand to navigate. Baldwin Wallace men’s basketball has the benefit of rising assistant coach Brian Schmidt, who’s made his career in the OAC.

Schmidt began his ascent in Northeast Ohio, growing up in an athletic family who loved basketball. The son of a basketball player, he and his basketball playing sister learned to appreciate and love the game at a young age.

“I grew up about 12 miles from Baldwin Wallace’s campus in Brunswick,” said Schmidt. “I’ve always been familiar with Baldwin Wallace, going to camps and growing up around here and being a local guy. When I was four or five, my dad put a ball in my hand and my uncle used to run a YMCA in Lakewood and that was kind of my first organized basketball in a Y league and I fell in love with it.”

While Schmidt concedes that his high school playing career was just ‘average’, he credits his step forward into the college ranks to hard work and determination.

“I was on good teams and then between the summer of my junior and senior year, I got a ton better,” said Schmidt. “I kind of just took it to another level. I was training basically six days [a week] at 6 a.m., weights and shooting and the whole deal. I had a really good senior year, made All-State, all that good stuff. Up until that point, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to play in college. I just kind of loved basketball and I wasn’t sure I was good enough, but I had a really good senior season and I was like man, I don’t want this to be over.”

Thanks to his hard work, Division III programs came calling and Schmidt’s final choice came down to a pair of BW coaching legends.

“Baldwin Wallace and Heidelberg, where I ended up going, were the two schools and there was also a small school, a Division II school in West Virginia called Ohio Valley that actually offered me a full ride,” said Schmidt. “Much to my parents’ dismay, I didn’t take it, but I decided it was basically between Heidelberg and Baldwin Wallace. At the time, the head coach at Heidelberg was Duane Sheldon, who was in his early to mid-30’s, a younger guy, really relatable and was at most of my games. The coach at BW at the time was Steve Bankson who was towards the end of his career, probably in his late 60’s or early 70’s. I think it was kind of a shock to a lot of people, because my high school coach was a BW alum, he’s in the Hall of Fame and I think it was kind of assumed I was going to BW, but I ended up going to Heidelberg instead and playing for Coach Sheldon, who full circle, ends up hiring me at Baldwin Wallace to be the full time assistant which is kind of crazy.”

Under the combination of Sheldon and Schmidt, Heidelberg slowly turned around their program. After a couple of sluggish seasons during Schmidt’s freshman and sophomore years, the team quickly began to prosper. The culmination of all the hard work led to an OAC Tournament Championship in 2007-08, the first in the history of the program. Schmidt helped lead the Student Princes to the program’s third ever NCAA Tournament appearance and finished as the program’s all-time leader in field goal percentage (.580) and as one of 32 1,000 point scorers in team history.

The experiences faced by Schmidt in the early years of his playing career at Heidelberg helped mold him into a leader. As a freshman, he was a part of an all-freshman starting lineup and had to step up to become a leader from the get go, even through a series of early struggles.

“I’ve kind of been through it all man, and to be honest with you after my freshman year at Heidelberg, I was like ‘this is awful, I don’t want to do this anymore, like we are terrible’,” said Schmidt. “I love basketball, but it wasn’t any fun. Same with our sophomore year, we were bad. I don’t know why, I mean I love basketball and made some really great friends at Heidelberg, but I could have said I’m going to transfer to BW because they were good and winning championships and I mean that’s the easy route right? But I did stick with it, and I think there’s something to be said about that: seeing your way through it. Everything’s a process and I remember when we were freshmen and sophomores, Coach Sheldon saying we were young and it’s going to take some time, it’s a process, and he was right. There was a vision, there was a plan, we bought into it.”

Schmidt’s lessons from Coach Sheldon helped propel him into the field of coaching. His first stop was at Brunswick High School, where he coached under BW Athletic Alumni Association Hall of Famer Joe Mackey. Following a successful run with the Blue Devils that included a district runner-up finish in 2014, Schmidt followed his old coach back into the OAC as an assistant at Baldwin Wallace. After Sheldon became the Athletic Director at Dublin Coffman High School, Schmidt remained with new Head Coach Tom Heil, with whom he’s formed a strong partnership.

“With Coach Heil, we do literally everything together,” said Schmidt. “Whether it be about our current team, our current roster, film breakdown, our practice breakdown, what we are going to run offensively, defensively, it’s just constant dialogue. He’s obviously been nothing short of awesome to work for.”

The duo have combined to lead the Yellow Jackets to an OAC Championship in 2018-19 and restore and enhance the rich program tradition.

“It’s not even to the point where I feel like I’m working with him,” said Schmidt of Heil. “We talk every day, even on our off days about basketball and the dialogue is just always there and it’s not really work [for us].”

Head Coach Tom Heil sees Schmidt as both an extremely valuable piece of the equation over this stretch and as a lifelong friend.

“It is difficult for me to find the words to articulate what Brian means to our program,” said Heil. “He has a major role in every aspect of everything we do. He has a significant voice at practice. He has a significant voice on game day. He is our recruiting coordinator. He is a leader and does a tremendous job helping our players develop as students, players, and people. It is hard for me to imagine coaching basketball without him. He has become as close of a friend as anyone in my life.”

The future continues to look bright for both BW and Schmidt. Schmidt is hoping to guide another group of young players back to OAC supremacy, much like he has done with 10 past All-OAC performers during his tenure. Schmidt knows the value of experience in the OAC and hopes to use that energy to motivate his future group of athletes.

“I played in the OAC, and I’m going on my seventh season here, so for 11 years I’ve been a part of the OAC and it’s a different animal,” said Schmidt. “Being in the OAC and playing in the OAC prepared me to coach in the OAC because it’s a daily, hourly grind. The minute you start to feel sorry for yourself or lose a tough one on the road on Wednesday to John Carroll, it’s like guess what, you’ve got to go on the road on Saturday and play Mount Union or Marietta, like nobody cares. You’ve just got to keep getting better and better and take it literally one practice at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time, whatever that looks like.”