Clayton Kuklick, an assistant coach at Division II Shepherd, has wanted to get to the NECBL for three years. Clayton Kuklick has spent several years in college baseball coaching and working in various summer wood bat leagues. It was all, he said, to get to the New England Collegiate Baseball League.

Now, North Adams SteepleCats general manager Sean McGrath is giving him the opportunity, hiring the Shepherd University assistant coach to be the SteepleCats' manager this summer. "It's been a goal of mine to get to that league for the last three years," he said. "I put myself in a position professionally, being a [manager] the last two seasons in order to get myself the opportunity to get into the NECBL. I'm looking forward to the challenge."

McGrath said that while the SteepleCats didn't get their guy the first time, he and the board of directors are happy to have him now. "We offered him the position last year. He was our No. 1 choice but he had a previous engagement and had to make the right decision to decline our offer," McGrath said. "As soon as the season ended, he was on my mind."

Kuklick is a 2005 graduate of Kutztown State (Pa.) University, and he has been an assistant there, at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and at Georgia College and State University. He is in his first year at Shepherd, a school picked to finish second in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. During his summers, Kuklick has coached in the KIT Collegiate Summer League based in the Midwest, and the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League, based in the northeast.

"He's a young, up-and-coming coach. He's got several years of summer baseball experience in different leagues," McGrath said. "He's similar to Marc Pavao, Laz Gutierrez and Brian Hamm, who's now at Amherst College, and Jeff Verplancke -- coaches who came through the SteepleCats and have advanced in their coaching careers."

Kuklick also has three years of independent professional baseball, spending the 2005-07 seasons in the Can-Am League. His best year was 2006, when he hit .306 in 57 games for the New Jersey Jackals.

As to the kind of team Clayton Kuklick will deploy on Joe Wolfe Field this summer, the new SteepleCats manager said much will depend the strengths of the players McGrath is getting to wear the gold and black.
"From an offensive standpoint, I like to put guys in motion and I like to be aggressive on the basepaths," he said. "That will open up opportunities for our hitters to be successful. It's nice if you've got a guy who can hit one over the fence, but our offense is probably going to revolve around being aggressive on the basepaths, [and hitting] the ball in the gaps."