Sean C. Morgan
John Best, who served as pitching coach for the Sweet Home baseball program, has stepped into the varsity head coach position as longtime head coach Dan Tow moves into an assistant coach role.
This is Best’s third year teaching health and PE at Sweet Home High School. He has been head pitching coach since coming to Sweet Home.
Best, 34, grew up in Philomath and graduated from high school there in 2001. After graduation, he played American Legion ball and then pitched at Linn-Benton Community College for two years. He played his junior season at Western Oregon University before transferring to Dakota Wesleyan University in South Dakota to play ball.
He returned to Western Oregon to finish his bachelor’s degree in health education and sports science and earned his master’s degree there in 2009.
Best spent the next five years subbing, most of it in Salem, Albany and Corvallis, and in the meantime, he coached baseball.
He landed his first permanent teaching position here in Sweet Home and went straight to coaching.
He continues to live in Albany, but he enjoys Sweet Home.
“It’s been great,” Best said. “It’s a different community, but I compare it a lot to Philomath.”
It’s the kind of place where everybody knows everybody, he said. “I enjoy teaching here and getting to know the kids.”
Best loves baseball, he said. That drove him into coaching, which is why he got into teaching.
“I got my first taste of coaching while I was going back to WOU,” Best said. His old high school coach asked him if he would coach the summer ball team.
“I realized I loved teaching as well, so win-win.”
He has coached a little at Philomath, two seasons at LBCC as head pitching coach and three seasons as varsity assistant at Crescent Valley. He also was head JV and freshman coach at Crescent Valley, and he was head pitching coach for two years for Tow.
Best is married to Laura Best, who works at Starbucks in Albany.