Longtime Baseball Coach Rex Ashmore Retires

Rex Ashmore, Adna's baseball coach at the time, is facing his brother, Doug Ashmore, Onalaska’s baseball coach, in a loser-out district match in the early 2000s at Adna High School. Rex stands up from behind the dugout screen, looks around and realizes he’d never seen so many people at a baseball game before. The stands are packed and people are lined up along both foul lines. Kraig Raschke hits a two-strike walk-off single up the middle in the bottom of the seventh and the crowd goes crazy.

It’s one of just many memories that Ashmore, who announced his retirement from coaching on Monday, has collected over the past 30 years.

“Those are memories of coaching that not many people get to experience,” Ashmore said. “It was an awesome one.”

He spent 23 years as a head coach, split between 15 seasons at Adna and the last eight at Centralia. He has also coached middle school football at Centralia the past five years.

Inducted into the Washington State Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame on June 8, 2019, Ashmore ends his career with a 274-168 overall record, which includes a 174-103 record at Adna and a 100-65 record at Centralia. The pinnacle of his coaching success came in 2015 when the Tigers captured the 2A state title.

After decades at the helm, he decided it’s the right time to hang it up.

“I didn’t want it to become a job, and it’s kind of become that to me,” Ashmore said. “There are younger people that can do that and it’s just not for me anymore. It’s been an awesome experience and an awesome 23 years as a head coach.”

It's retirement, he added, not a stepping down. He doesn’t plan on coming back to coaching.

Ashmore’s coaching career began under Marc Roberts and Randy Elam as the junior varsity coach at Centralia in 1989. He became varsity assistant in 1992 and the Tigers won the 2A state title in 1993. Ashmore took over as Adna’s head coach in 1998 and was joined by Bryan Zurfluh, whose boys were playing on the team at that time. Zurfluh would end up being what Ashmore describes as his co-coach for 22 of the next 23 years. The two led the Pirates to second- and third-place finishes over a 14-year span. Their best two year run with the Pirates was between 2007-08 when his teams went a combined 41-7.

“He’s obviously been the world to me, not only as a coach but as a friend,” Ashmore said. “It was never me being the head coach. He was right along with me in every decision we made.”

Ashmore was hired as Centralia’s head coach in 2013, while Zurfluh stayed behind in Adna to take over as the Pirates head coach for one year to finish out coaching kids he’d worked with since they were little.

“It was one of the difficult coaching decisions I’ve ever had to make, because my 15 years in Adna were awesome,” Ashmore said. “I couldn’t have asked for a more supportive community in everything we did out there.”

Ashmore was teaching in the Centralia School District at the time and it seemed like the right move to make. He graduated from Centralia High School and has been a teacher with the school district for the past 13 years. He is currently a fifth grade teacher at Washington Elementary School.

It took just three years for Ashmore to strike it big at Centralia, leading the Tigers in capturing the 2A state title in 2015, defeating Selah 8-3 on May 30, 2015 in Yakima. He ends his eight-year Centralia career with five regional appearances.

But the victories and accolades Ashmore has racked up over the years aren’t what is most important to him, it’s having his players improve as not only baseball players but people, as well.

“Progress is success,” Ashmore said. “As long as we get better as the year goes, we can always look back and call it a success. That’s just something we’ve coached by and tried to live by with our kids.”

Some of his favorites memories include the Pirates’ runner-up finish in a loss to DeSales in the 2008 2B state championship, as well as winning the 2A title with Centralia in 2015. It prompted Ashmore and Zurfluh to talk about which team they think would win in a head-to-head matchup.

“We figured with Christian Peters and Jake Sutton, we may have a little edge in pitching here in Centralia, but that team out in Adna could just flat out mash,” Ashmore said.

Some of his former players are now some of his closest friends, even though many are 20-plus years apart in age, he said.

“They’re some of my greatest friends, and that is, to me, what it’s always been about,” Ashmore said. “I’ve never been about wins or losses. I don’t even know how many games we’ve won or lost in 23 years because it’s never been about that. It’s always been about the relationships I’ve had with my coaches and the interactions with high school kids that have made it so pleasurable.”

What he’ll miss most about baseball isn’t the game itself, Ashmore said, it’s the people. None of it would have been possible without the support of his wife, Jenny, and daughters Danika, Morgan and Avery, who stood by him all this time. In addition, the commitment, friendship and loyalty of the coaches and players he’s worked with over the years is what has also carried him this far.

“I always tell people I’ve been blessed with the greatest coaches, in both places, that a person could ask for,” Ashmore said. “It’s never been about me. It’s always been about us.”