Mt. Pleasant, SC – Oceanside Collegiate Academy Director of Athletics Mark Meyers announced on Friday the hiring of former Major League pitcher Britt Reames as the Landsharks new baseball coach.
Reames takes over for Richie McCullough, who stepped down following the Landsharks second consecutive SCHSL Class 2A state championship this past spring.
A native of Seneca, SC, Reames was a standout player at Seneca High and was drafted by the Texas Rangers in the 1992 MLB Draft. He passed on professional baseball at the time, instead attending The Citadel where he had a Hall of Fame career for the Bulldogs.
A hard-throwing right-hander who finished his collegiate career with an 18-7 record and 2.03 ERA for the Bulldogs, Reames finished second in school history with 296 career strikeouts, having also established the school record for strikeouts in a season (135 in 1994) and game (18, vs. Marshall in 1995 during the Southern Conference Tournament). He was a member of the 1994 pitching staff that set the school record with 531 strikeouts.
He recorded 10 wins in 1995, earning first-team All-Southern Conference honors after being named second team All-Conference in 1994. He was also twice named to the SoCon All-Tournament team, helping The Citadel to consecutive Tournament championships along with one team regular-season title.
He pitched in the 1994 East Regional at Clemson and the 1995 Mideast Regional at Knoxville.
While at The Citadel he earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 1995.
Reames was drafted again following the 1995 season, in the 17th round by the St. Louis Cardinals. He worked his way through the Cardinals’ minor league system, breaking into the Major Leagues in 2000. He pitched for the Cardinals in the Division Series against Atlanta and the National League Championship Series against New York that year.
Overall, he played six years in the Major Leagues for the Cardinals, Montreal Expos, Oakland Athletics and Pittsburgh Pirates.
Following his playing career, Reames went right into coaching. He spent three years on the staff at Furman University under Coach Ron Smith before returning to his alma mater, The Citadel, where he coached for six years under Fred Jordan. He served as pitching and catching coordinator for the Bulldogs.
Reames stepped away from coaching in 2017 and has worked as a Sales Supervisor and Project Manager for Jeffrey Brown Services, a general contractor in Charleston, as well as a Property Manager for Sweetgrass Properties in Kiawah Island.
Reames was inducted into the Citadel Hall of Fame in 2008 and, in 2013, was inducted into the Charleston Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2020 he was presented with the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office Citizen Award for his development of a youth baseball camp program called the Charleston Power Brigade in which he raised more than $20,000 over two years to provide baseball gloves and other equipment to underprivileged youths in the Charleston area.
Reames is married to Laura Carmody and has two children, Britt 13 and Tate 10.
About Oceanside Collegiate Academy: Oceanside Collegiate Academy (OCA), located in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., serves high school students in a safe, small and family-centered setting. Our students seek the opportunity and challenge of rigorous curriculum, high academic standards and elite athletics while earning up to two years of college credit. OCA serves students in grades 9-12 using an honors curriculum in 9th and 10 grades with a dual enrollment curriculum in 11th and 12th grades
Learn more about OCA by visiting our website at OceansideCollegiateAcademy.org and by following us on social media on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. For video content, visit our YouTube channel.