Coaching Staff

Drew Keehn

Baseball - Head Coach

E-Mail:  Drew Keehn

Drew Keehn got right to it in his first year at the helm of the program, earning Region I Coach of the Year honors in 2012 as he led his squad to their first Region I Playoff berth in six years last May. John Stratton hired him to be the team’s first-ever full-time lead assistant in the fall of 2010, and after one year, Stratton saw someone in Keehn that he respected enough to hand the reins of the program to after 27 years. Keehn overhauled the roster in his first season as head coach, stressing fundamentals and ‘doing the little things’ mercilessly to his new charges. Keehn’s playing and coaching experience on just about every level of the sport, his respected baseball IQ and his prior ACCAC coaching experience made him an attractive head coaching candidate. Keehn spent four of the previous 6 seasons before arriving at AWC coaching and recruiting for ACCAC baseball teams, since he earned his first collegiate coaching stripes as an assistant under current Central Arizona Head Baseball coach Jon Wente as an assistant for Wente’s Odessa Junior College Wrangler Baseball team in 2005 before moving with Wente to CAC from 2006 through 2008 as CAC’s recruiting coordinator and pitching coach. Keehn helped lead the Vaqueros to a pair of Region I Championships, and his final recruiting class eventually reached the 2008 NJCAA World Series Championship Game. Keehn then made the successful jump to the NCAA Division I level during 2008 as the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. In three years at LMU, Keehn oversaw a Lions’ pitching staff that finished 3rd in the conference in earned run average and allowed the fewest walks, and the staff helped take the Lions to a 2nd-place finish in the WCC in 2009. Keehn also spent three summers coaching semi-professional baseball as pitching coach for the Brainard Blue Thunder in ’05, and as head coach of the Liberal Bee Jays in 2006 & 2007. He has even coached high school ball as head coach at Ironwood Ridge High School in Tucson. Before Keehn’s coaching career took flight, Drew had a playing career that saw him reach the professional level. Keehn was a standout pitcher at Central Arizona College from 1992-94, which drew the attention of the Colorado Rockies, who drafted him in the ’93 Major League Baseball Draft. Keehn’s three years in the Rockies’ organization saw him pitch on the Rookie & Class A levels. A native of Wyandotte, Michigan, Keehn earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science at the University of Arizona, and a Master’s Degree in Education from the University of Phoenix. Keehn and his wife of four years, former 6-time NJCAA All-American and 4-time NAIA All-American track & cross-country star athlete Aybuke Kizilarslan, welcomed their first child, daughter Nisa, into the world right after the start of the Matadors’ 2011 baseball season.

Kyle Carothers

Baseball - Assistant Coach

E-Mail:  Kyle Carothers

One of Drew Keehn’s first tasks when he moved up from assistant to head baseball coach was find someone he trusted as his lead assistant as much as Keehn was trusted by longtime AWC Head Baseball Coach John Stratton. That man was Kyle Carothers, since Keehn saw that Kyle’s experience with every aspect of playing, training for and coaching baseball on the high school, junior college, four-year university, and pro levels over the last decade would benefit the program on several levels. Carothers finished off a star playing career at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, by joining Whitman’s coaching staff shortly after earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from WC in 2002. He served as an assistant for the Missionaries in the spring of ’03, then extended his playing career that summer playing 1st base in the Canadian Baseball League. Carothers made the trek to the Grand Canyon State for the first time after that, spending two years as a high school assistant coach (under Keehn) at Ironwood Ridge High School in Tucson. A longtime student of the fitness game, Carothers’ next move was to the four-year college level, where he spent the next two years as a fitness coordinator and personal trainer at the University of Arizona. The spring of 2006 saw Carothers return to the high school level as a hitting instructor for the Sahuaro High School varsity baseball team in Tucson. His first taste of head coaching was the next two summers at the Wilkinson Academy in Lynnwood, Washington, coordinating all on-field activities. Carothers’ junior college career began in 2006, when he returned to the Grand Canyon State to be the Strength & Conditioning Coach at Chandler-Gilbert Community College. Carothers spent four years working with the Coyotes’ baseball, basketball, volleyball and golf players before jumping at the chance to return to coaching by heading to Yuma.
While at CGCC, Carothers continued to work toward his Master’s Degree, and earned it in 2008 from Arizona State University in the field of Exercise and Wellness. Carothers and his wife, Brianna, are happy to be new residents of Yuma, and dote over their three-year-old son, Peter, and their newborn daughter, Kinley.

 Jordan McCavitt

Baseball - Assistant Coach/Recruiting Coordinator

E-Mail:  Jordan McCavitt

To complete his new-look coaching staff when he ascended to head coach in 2011, Drew Keehn wanted a recruiting coordinator as experienced and quietly aggressive as Keehn is. Jordan McCavitt fits that bill nicely. Like Keehn, McCavitt has had the chance to coach on just about every level in a short amount of time, and he’s taken advantage of all of those opportunities. McCavitt was a star player in the Golden State for both Monterey Peninsula College and San Diego City College for a season each. He showed enough star power at SDCC to earn a scholarship to Oklahoma Baptist University, where he led them to the NAIA Regionals and a top-10 national ranking as a senior. After setting a new school record with 33 relief appearances in a single season and earning All-Region VI and All-Sooner Athletic Conference honors in the process, McCavitt then hit the professional level in the Continental Baseball League, making the All-Star team both years. In fact, during the last 4 years of his playing career, McCavitt had a won-loss record of 22-9 while picking up 8 saves. McCavitt wasn’t just focusing on his playing career, though, since he spent his off-seasons coaching on various levels. He spent the spring of 2009 as an assistant coach at Scotts Valley High School in California and the spring of 2010 as the JV & freshman pitching coordinator at Mount Carmel High School in San Diego. In 2011, McCavitt hung up the cleats for the final time as a player, and became a full-time coach, moving up to the college ranks as an assistant at Mid-America Christian University in Oklahoma City in the spring, and as the pitching coach for the Mountain Collegiate League Champions, the Cheyenne Grizzlies in Cheyenne, Wyoming over the summer. He then jumped at the chance to move to Arizona in the fall of 2011 to join the Matadors’ coaching staff. Along the way, McCavitt earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from Oklahoma Baptist University; and just earned his Master’s Degree in Leadership last fall.

Baseball - Assistant Coach

Next year will mark the 50-year anniversary of when Jack Watson first took a step on the AWC campus. That was when a young Watson accepted the challenge of building the brand-new Matador Baseball program from the ground up. Watson began his AWC tenure in 1964 as a professor, and then one year later became the school’s athletic director and first-ever head baseball coach. Under Jack’s direction, the Matadors’ athletic programs flourished for the next decade, especially the football team, which went to six straight bowl games, and won the National Championship in 1972. Jack’s successful run overseeing the department ended in 1975, when he stepped down to move into the private sector. Watson was just as successful there as he was on campus, spending the better part of the last four decades in the insurance industry running his own business. In 2004, Watson and the Matadors reunited after then-head coach John Stratton asked Watson to join his coaching staff, and nine years later, Watson is the only remaining coach from that time. Before coming to Yuma, Jack was a baseball star-first at North Phoenix High School and then on a baseball scholarship at the University of Arizona. Jack then began his coaching career while attending graduate school at the U of A, coaching the Wildcats’ freshman baseball team. He then moved on to coach Glendale High School to the Arizona State Baseball Championship in 1959. Watson’s legacy at AWC is indelibly etched-thanks to the Jack Watson Scholarship, which was formed 5 years ago by a large group of Watson’s former players to honor him, and will give future baseball student-athletes a chance to get an education in Jack’s name. Jack and the love of his life, Marlee, are celebrating their 55th year of marriage, and still dote on their two children and two grandchildren.