Klitsner Steps Down as Mission Baseball Coach

John Klitsner, athletic director and baseball coach at Mission College, said Thursday he will not coach next season and will concentrate on developing the sports program at the school.

“My school administrators feel that I need to devote more time to being an athletic director and they are right,” Klitsner said. “They want me to establish with the entire athletic program the credibility we established with the baseball program.”

Klitsner said that Randy Cooper, an assistant at Canyons last season, will replace him as coach. Cooper is a former Hoover High and Canyons player who was also an assistant at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Calif., and at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, Calif.

Under Klitsner the past seven seasons, the Free Spirit was 140-138 and advanced to the Southern California Regional three times. The team won 20 or more games in a season four times.

Mission won the Southern California Athletic Conference in 1994 but moved to the Western State Conference South Division last season and had a disappointing showing. The Free Spirit finished tied with Glendale in fourth place at 8-18 and was 14-30 overall.

Klitsner, 43, was instrumental in the construction and maintenance of the school’s baseball field that was developed two years ago. He became athletic director in 1992.

The school also fields teams in men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s cross-country and men’s soccer. Klitsner said he is planning to add softball and women’s soccer in the next two or three years.

Klitsner is the second area junior college baseball coach to resign in the past few days. Last week, longtime Glendale Coach Steve Coots took an indefinite leave of absence for unspecified health reasons.