Baseball and wrestling don't necessarily go hand-in-hand when it comes to coaching.
"Nope," agreed Mike DeMilia.
But those are the divergent paths DeMilia has taken in his coaching career as the former Lincoln University head baseball coach was named the head wrestling coach at Blair Oaks last week.
DeMilia, who is serving as the manager of the Jefferson City Renegades in the MINK League this summer, wrestled in high school. After becoming a teacher at Bryan High School in Omaha, Neb., DeMilia found out the school needed an assistant wrestling coach.
"I just got into it there and fell in love with the coaching part," he said.
After Lincoln shut down its baseball program last year, DeMilia joined the teaching staff in the Blair Oaks school district.
It didn't take long for Blair Oaks head wrestling coach Tim Kartsten to add DeMilia to his staff.
"My first teaching day, Tim found me right away," DeMilia said. "I wasn't sure I wanted to do it, but once I got into it, it was a lot of fun."
DeMilia will be just the second head coach in the history of the Blair Oaks wrestling program. Karsten stepped down at the end of last season after leading the Falcons in the first 16 seasons of the program, including a state championship in the 2013-14 season.
"I know the program has been really good for the last 10 years or so," DeMilia said. "Tim was very successful and it's up to me to continue that tradition."
It will be an inexperienced group of Falcons this fall.
"We're losing a lot of experience and we have just one senior coming back, so we're going to be really young," DeMilia said. "We are going to have to battle to be successful the next couple of years, but I think we are going to get things going again."
DeMilia was impressed with the brand of wrestling in the area during his first season at Blair Oaks.
"Wrestling around here is pretty good," he said. "In Nebraska, there's a big difference between wrestling at the larger schools and the smaller schools.
"But I've seen in Missouri there are a lot of talented individuals in Class 1 that can hang with the guys in Class 4 in the state tournament."
Blair Oaks finished 26th in the Class 1 state tournament last season.