Head Baseball Coach Ron Bradley is a member of Oklahoma Baseball Coaches Association (OBCA) Hall of Fame, Class of 2003.
He began his collegiate coaching career at RSU in 2004 after compiling one of the most successful high school baseball coaching resumes in Oklahoma history. Most recently, Bradley was named the Oklahoma College Baseball Coach of the Year by his peers in January 2009. His career accomplishments include four state championships in four different classifications (2A, 4A, 5A, 6A), one state runner-up, and eleven regional championships. He tallied nearly 500 career victories in his 21 years as a head coach at the high school level and holds the unique distinction of winning the first baseball state championship at West Fork (Ark.), Claremore (Okla.), and Jenks (Okla.) high schools. Bradley took Claremore to the state championship game three different times and reached at least the semi-final round in all three seasons he coached at Class 6A power Jenks High School.
Bradley has been selected Oklahoma Coach of the Year three times by The Daily Oklahoman and Tulsa World. He has also been honored with two National Region Coach of the Year Awards and is a five time OBCA Coach of the Year.
In 1998 he led the Oklahoma Senior Sunbelt team to its first ever Sunbelt Series Championship. Bradley has also been honored with coaching duties in the Oklahoma All-State game, Sooner State games and numerous other all-star competitions.
More than a dozen of Bradley’s former players have been selected in the Major League Baseball amateur draft, two of which have reached the big leagues.
Bradley has been a keynote speaker at the state and national level and is highly regarded in the baseball coaching community for his philosophies on hitting and his ability to build championship programs.
Bradley laid the foundation for athletics at RSU when he introduced club sports to the campus as the director of physical education in 2004. He later served as interim athletic director and remains instrumental in the development of RSU athletic programs.
In eight season, Bradley’s club has posted a 264-160 record. Bradley guided the Hillcats to their first winning season in 2007 with a 28-23 record. He followed that up with a 35-16 record in 2008 and a fourth place finish as a first year member of the prestigious Sooner Athletic Conference. He achieved his 100th collegiate coaching victory in 2009 and has led RSU to four consecutive winning seasons.
The 2011 Diamond Cats had the most success in program history going 45-15 and capturing the Sooner Athletic Conference Tournament Championship. The Cats reached the NAIA National Championship Opening Round and were ranked as high as No. 11 in the NAIA Baseball Coaches’ Poll, marking the first time the Cats had cracked the Top 25 in program history.
In 2012 RSU reached yet another first as the Hillcats tallied a 49-16 record in a run to a NAIA National Runner Up finish at the NAIA Baseball World Series, the first national runner up finish for any Hillcat athletic team. Bradley tallied his 200th collegiate coaching victory in 2012 and led the Hillcats to consecutive 40-plus win seasons.
The Diamond Cats returned to the NAIA World Series in 2013 after winning the NAIA Opening Round-Claremore Bracket. RSU went 4-0 in the Opening Round to reach its second-straight World Series.
He and his wife Jill reside in Claremore. They have two grown children; Ryan, Associate Athletic Director – Marketing & Strategic Communications at the University of Memphis, and Kayla, an elementary school teacher in Lawrence, Kan.
