Ernie Myers
Standout as Player, Hall of Fame Coach
From playing baseball on the sandlots of north Flint to conducting bicycle tours of far-off countries, sports has been a common part of Ernie Myers’ life. His dedication as a player, coach and athletic director has earned Myers, 66, induction tonight into the Greater Flint Area Sports Hall of Fame.
It was while playing in Mott Foundation-sponsored baseball leagues at Civic Park and Longfellow Schools that Myers learned the skills he’d use to become a standout third baseman at Northern High, where he graduated in 1954. “We won a number of championships with those Mott Foundation teams,” Myers said. The championships continued at Northern, with Myers playing for two years on a team which was the first to win four straight city titles. The Vikings also won the Saginaw Valley Conference championship in 1953. Myers also lettered in basketball at Northern.
He played third base for the Fisher Post American Legion team which won state titles in 1951 and ’52. After leaving Northern, Myers played baseball for four years at the University of Michigan, graduating in 1958. He began the 1959 baseball season with Duluth-Superior of the Class C Northern League while under contract to Toronto of the international League. His pro baseball career was cut short when he was drafted into the Army, being called up for active duty twice.
Myers returned to the world of college sports when he attended Michigan State and earned a master’s degree in 1963 while mentoring the Spartans’ freshman team. After working as a high school physical education teacher in the Fenton, Beecher and Dixon, Mo., school districts, he was named baseball coach at Flint Junior College (now Mott Community College) in April 1964. It was a position he held for 18 years, compiling a 359-155 (.698) record.
Teams coached by Myers won nine Michigan Junior College Athletic Association Eastern Conference championships. The best finish by one of his teams was in 1971, when it finished third in the nation with a 38-12 record and won the National Junior College Athletic Association sportsmanship award. He also served as two stints as Mott’s athletic director, holding the post from 1978-80 and again from 1993-98. “Mott was a great experience for me,” Myers said.
MCC Athletic Director Tom Healey thinks Myers is qualified for induction solely on his success with the Bears. “He’s certainly a well deserving candidate,” Healey said. “Without taking into account the other things he’s done, just the tremendous contributions he made to the baseball at Mott makes him deserving.
It was success at MCC that earned Myers an invitation to coach the USA national team in 1974. That team won the gold medal at the World Games in Managua, Nicaragua. That experience led to his being invited to coach the Netherlands national team. He coached the Netherlands team three times in the prestigious Haarlem International Tournament, twice in the European Games and twice in the World Games.
It was while he and his family, wife Patricia, son Terry and daughter Kim, were spending their summers in the Netherlands that Myers began bicycling in earnest. He approached the pastime much the way he approached baseball in his life with gusto. After conducting an informal tour of the Netherlands, using friends made while coaching as booking agents and travel guides, he went professional, organizing and conducting tours in Holland, Vermont, Belgium, France and the Dutch Antilles.
“It’s a good way to exercise and you’d be amazed at how much more you actually see when you’re traveling on bicycle,” Myers said. Myers, who wrote the constitution for the GFASHF and served on its board of directors for 10 years, is humbled at his induction.
“It’s nice to know you’re that well-known,” he said. “Flint has an incredible sports tradition and now I feel like maybe I’ve contributed to that tradition.”
