Keith’s legacy earns Hall of Fame call
· Yahoo Sports
Some coaching careers can be summarized by numbers.
Brian Keith’s requires quite a few of them.
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Five state championships. More than 1,000 combined victories. Hundreds of athletes coached. Nearly two decades overseeing both Verdigris baseball and softball.
Now, one more number can be attached to Keith’s resume.
One nomination was all it took.
Keith has been voted into the Oklahoma Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame on his first nomination, adding a career honor to a tenure that has helped establish Verdigris as one of the state’s most consistently successful athletic programs.
Keith has served as the Cardinals’ baseball coach since 2007 and the Lady Cardinals’ softball coach since 2006, accumulating more than 500 victories in each sport.
His baseball resume is particularly decorated. Verdigris won five baseball state championships during a six-year span under Keith, capturing Class 4A titles in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2016.
The Cardinals nearly added two more, finishing as state runner-up in 2017 and 2021. They reached the semifinals in 2018 and have made six additional quarterfinal appearances during Keith’s tenure, most recently this past spring.
Keith reached 300-career baseball victories in 2018, 400 in 2022 and 500 in 2025, and his success has brought plenty of individual recognition along the way.
Keith was named the Oklahoma Coaches Association High School Baseball Coach of the Year in 2015 and the Oklahoma Baseball Coaches Association Pro-Line Coach of the Year in 2012. He was an OCA All-State coach in 2012 and earned Region 4 Coach of the Year honors in 2021.
He has also been selected as the Three Rivers Baseball Coach of the Year 11 times, along with receiving coach-of-the-year recognition from his district, the Will Rogers Conference, Tulsa World and VYPE Magazine.
And baseball represents only half of his workload. Keith has simultaneously built a lengthy softball resume since taking over the Lady Cardinals in 2006.
Verdigris finished as the state runner-up in 2015 and reached the semifinals in 2018. The Lady Cardinals have also made nine state quarterfinal appearances under Keith, including trips in 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2021 and 2024.
Like baseball, Keith has surpassed 500 career victories in softball. He was named the District 4A-5 Softball Coach of the Year in 2023 and earned Will Rogers Conference Coach of the Year honors in 2007.
Put the two sports together, and Keith has spent virtually the entire school year overseeing one Verdigris diamond or the other. However, his work has extended to the fields themselves.
Keith has spent countless hours maintaining the Verdigris baseball and softball facilities, whether that means mowing, improving the complexes or even pumping water from the outfield following storms in an attempt to get a game played.
It is the sort of behind-the-scenes work that never appears in a box score but has become part of the culture Keith has spent two decades creating.
The results of that work are considerably easier to see.
They are represented by the championship trophies. The postseason appearances. The 1,000-plus victories. The generations of Cardinals and Lady Cardinals who have played for him.
Now, they are represented by a Hall of Fame induction, too.
And for Keith, it only took one nomination to get there.