It turns out the Ozark Catholic athletic director and boys' basketball coach found a baseball coach, too.
"We were just talking and I was thinking 'Man, this guy knows a lot about baseball,'" Vaught said. "We talked some more and I got the feeling he'd coached. So I started asking more questions. I was 5 years old when he graduated."
A little while later he found a person to start a baseball program at the school only in its third year of existence.
Thomas was a four-year letterman for the University of Arkansas in baseball in the mid-1980s and a part of two teams that went to the College World Series.