The premise was that both must restock their roster on a yearly basis.
The Kentucky basketball coach is the annual king of one-and-done athletes. Seven players have declared early for the NBA draft off this year’s Final Four team.
By the nature of junior college athletics, Dintaman will never have a player more than two years. And some of the good players — and Sinclair has had quite a few lately — often get offers from four-year colleges after their freshman season with the Tartans.
That’s the case again this year on a superb Sinclair team that is 38-6, ranked No. 5 in the nation and already has won the Ohio Community College Athletic Conference (OCCAC) for the fifth time in six years.
Freshman outfielder Tyler Cowles, for instance, is drawing interest from Ohio State.
“So you and Coach Cal do have something in common,” it was again suggested.
The Sinclair coach laughed and shook his head: “That would be the only thing.”
Not quite.
Just as Calipari is one of the most successful coaches in the college game, Dintaman has an impressive 291-109 mark in his eight seasons at Sinclair.
But after that the comparisons start to drift toward opposite ends of the spectrum.
Last year Calipari signed a seven-year deal at Kentucky worth $52.5 million. Until three years ago Dintaman was making $11,000 a year as the Sinclair coach, a position that was considered part time.
But because of the way he’s developed the program — not just on the field, but by the way his players have stepped to the plate in the classroom — Dintaman was elevated to full-time at the school as an enrollment adviser.
While Calipari never has to worry about a recruiting budget, Dintaman puts together a team each year with five or six in-state scholarships. Meanwhile, some of the other teams in their conference have the full allotment of 24 scholarships.
To boost the meager budget, Dintaman and his staff — assistants split $2,400 annually — are involved in fundraisers year round and boost their coffers by $35,00 to $40,000 annually. They run softball leagues in the school’s fieldhouse, hold camps, have a dugout club for supporters and also get assistance from the Sinclair Foundation.
Still, frugality is part of the program. When the team traveled — by van — to season-opening games in Georgia, Dintaman came up with a unique idea to cut down on hotel rooms.
“I bought 12 air mattresses for like $15 each on overstock.com,” he said. “I slept in one. It was pretty comfortable.”
When the team is playing doubleheaders, Dintaman offers peanut butter and jelly sandwiches — players make them — in the dugout between games.
And then there is the portable toilet.
It’s a staple both at their home games at the Athletes in Action complex in Xenia and at games like Thursday night’s trip to Miami University-Hamilton.
There at the far end of the visitors’ dugout at Foundation Field sat the little white toilet with a blue seat. And every once in a while you would hear a player urge a momentarily troubled teammate to:
“Flush it. Flush it.”
Simple sales pitch
Dintaman — who played for the Tartans, then graduated from the University of Dayton and served as a Sinclair assistant — took over the program when head coach Mike Goldschmidt left for Urbana University.
Although he was just 23, Dintaman said several area coaches reached out to him. Along with Goldschmidt, he mentioned Dayton Flyers coach Tony Vittorio and former Wright State coach Rob Cooper. And Tom Bell, who had been a Sinclair assistant, stayed on to help.
From the outset, Dintaman and his coaches were able to recruit talented players using a straightforward sales pitch.
“The best players we’re usually recruiting would essentially be Division I walk-ons,” Dintaman said. “We tell them, ‘Look, you can come to us and have a chance to play right away as a freshman. You’ll be competing for 200 plate appearances a year or 50 or 60 innings on the mound. You can develop and get stronger and then the Division I schools will like you even more.’ ”
Since 2008, Dintaman has had more than 70 players go on to four-year schools, including 23 to NCAA Division I programs. Last season, Mitch Roman was the Tartans starting shortstop as a freshman and ended up the conference MVP.
This year he has started every game for Wright State and is the Raiders’ second-leading hitter with a .329 average.
Several players on this year’s Tartan team are already committed to four-years schools after the season ends.
Along with their baseball skills, Dintaman stresses performance in the classroom. A higher grade-point average than the athletic norm is required and players are told to sit in the front row of their classes. Their academic performance is monitored regularly .
“We’ve got close to a 3.0 team GPA and in 2012 we were an Academic All-America team, one of just 33 schools in the country,” Dintaman said.
Players are also pushed to be involved in the community, which is why you’ll often see the Tartans taking part in the annual Martin Luther King Day march in Dayton.
“I see a lot of young coaches jump around from job to job, always looking for something better,” said the 31-year-pld Dintaman. “I’ve always wanted to stay somewhere to try to make an impact. I don’t think you can do that when you keep moving. I’d rather try to make a legacy, a difference.”
National stage?
Dintaman said an eye-opening moment in his career came when he heard sports psychologist Ken Ravizza speak about the mental game of athletics.
“It was never part of my game as a player,” he said. “I didn’t understand it. But when I heard Ken it was the most game-changing speech I’d ever heard. I went out and got his book and fell in love with it.
“I was fortunate because Rob Cooper was a big mental game guy and he used to bring Ken in and I’d go over and talk to him.”
Soon after, Dintaman began to embrace the approach of Brian Cain, the mental conditioning and peak performance coach who had been a college ballplayer and coach.
“We are in his inner circle, it’s like a bible for our program,” Dintaman said. “I don’t think there is anything more important that we do. It helps guys learn to deal with adversity.”
And that brings us back to the miniature toilet, which is used for “flushing away” a bad at-bat or an errant pitch.
There are other props, too, including various signs taped up in the dugout. Some have inspirational messages. Some add a bit of humor, such as the one from a couple of years back that featured the late crocodile hunter Steve Irwin holding onto a croc with a baseball in its mouth.
It was accompanied by the message: “Hunt Fastballs.”
Dintaman also has players make up a “Compared To What?” sign that the coaches then make into a collage. Each player finds images that are especially meaningful. It may be a soldier or a child dealing with cancer.
When a guy comes into the dugout grousing about a bad play, he’s told to look at the “Compared To What?” poster.
It all seems to work.
The Tartans are having another stellar season. Until Thursday night, when they rested several starters and ended up losing 6-3 to Miami-Hamilton, they had won 12 in a row.
With the few games left on their schedule, they are positioning themselves for the regional tournament with hopes of advancing to the junior college World Series for the first time.
A national tournament like that would give Dintaman another similarity to Calipari, but he actually does now share one other thing in common with the UK coach.
Calipari and his wife Ellen have been married since 1986.
Earlier this year, Dintaman and his girlfriend Kristen eloped on the Athletes in Action field
The team chaplain officiated and two of the AIA maintenance men took photos.
“UD was going to practice on the field next and Tony Vittorio walked up and said, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ ” Dintaman said with a grin. “I told him to look at the scoreboard.”
It read “Just Married.”
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