Stony Wine arrived at Barton College in 1992 with considerable baseball skills and knowledge. He left with all the tools to produce a career worthy of his induction into the Barton College Athletic Hall of Fame.
Wine was a very good baseball player, well versed in the game, long before he got to Barton. He gained his fundamentals at Wilson Memorial High School in Fishersville, Va., under Bo Bowers, whose program had won multiple state titles. He built upon that base at Allegany Community College under Steve Bazarnic, a member of the Junior College Hall of Fame and the winningest active junior college coach in the country. At Allegany, Wine went to the National Junior College World Series both seasons, earning a spot on the All-World Series Team in 1991.
But Wine said he gained a new understanding of baseball at Barton under head coach Todd Wilkinson.
“Coach Wilkinson taught me how to hit,” Wine said. “I always hit the ball hard, but always hit line drives on the ground. As my body developed, he helped me develop more power.”
It also didn’t hurt that Wine had gone from being “a skinny little runt” in high school, weighing about 160, to a full-grown 215 by the time he reached Barton.
“I had recruited Stony out of high school before he went to junior college, and two years later when he came for a visit and stood in that door, he had grown into a man,” Wilkinson said. “We were fortunate to have him for two years, and he really got our program pointed in the direction of winning championships.”
Wine had a superb junior season, so good that he was named an NAIA Honorable Mention All-American despite having the year cut short by a hip injury following a collision fielding a fly ball against Mount Olive. The lingering effects of the injury, coupled with opponents pitching around him, kept Wine’s numbers down slightly in 1993, but he was still a key contributor batting cleanup in a lineup that made it to the NAIA District 26 championship game.
“He was a hard worker, a great player who hit for power, a run producer, and a terrific first baseman,” Wilkinson said of Wine. “He had one of the best years of any player we’ve ever had here, and then he got injured. It set our team back and ended a great year for him. With his reputation being known at that point going into his senior year, it made it more difficult to get good pitches.”
In his senior season, Wine did manage to go 4-for-5, including a home run, with a pair of runs and four RBI in leading Barton to a victory over nationally-ranked St. Andrews that clinched the conference championship for the Bulldogs and gave the program its first NAIA District 26 playoff berth in five years. Barton also earned its first-ever national ranking late that season, climbing into the poll at No. 24 before losing the District 26 title game to Carson-Newman.
For all his accomplishments as a player, Wine’s greatest achievements were yet to come.
After graduating from Barton with a degree in physical education, Wine remained part of the program as an assistant coach, while at the same time earning his master’s degree in the administration of athletics and physical education from East Carolina University, which he completed in 1998.
Wine also served as an assistant coach with the Wilson Tobs in the summer of 1997, the first of three straight summers he spent working with a team in the Coastal Plain League. In 1998, he was an assistant coach with the now-defunct Rocky Mount Rockfish, and, in 1999, he got his first manager’s job with the Edenton Steamers.
Wine served two seasons as an assistant at Appalachian State, and he worked two years as an instructor with the North Carolina Baseball Academy.
In 2003, he accepted the position of head coach and athletic director at Southeastern Community College in Whiteville, N.C. When the president of Southeastern took the same role at Lenoir Community College in 2005, Wine went with him and has served there ever since with spectacular results.
Since 2005, Wine has earned National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Region Coach of the Year recognition five times, and he has led two squads from Lenoir to World Series appearances.
His 2006 squad still holds the NJCAA Division II record for highest team batting average in a season, and his 2007 team included the nation’s top three stolen base leaders. “The offense that I’ve implemented in our program is the way we did it at Barton,” Wine said. “That’s a tribute to Coach Wilkinson. If I didn’t have his guidance, I don’t know where I would be right now.”
Wilkinson said it was “very humbling” to hear those comments, and that he’s not surprised Wine has been highly successful as a head coach.
“The first thing I think of when I think of Stony is he loves baseball,” Wilkinson said. “Baseball is a passion for him. He loves the sport, and he’s always had a strong work ethic. So when he knew what he wanted to do, I didn’t think it would be any different than the kind of player he came to be. He was going to drive himself and position himself where he could reach the goals he had set for himself.
“His record is tremendous. As a coach, when one of your players ends up coaching, you’re very proud that that’s happened. You certainly hope that things you might have done as a coach would be part of their philosophy as they go forward and that it helped them.”
Wine said he couldn’t ask for more from his Barton experience.
“I became a student of the game at Barton, especially in the hitting area,” Wine said. “I had some good players around me, had a great time when I was playing. I learned a heck of a lot about working on a field – putting in sprinkler systems, laying sod, planting grass. But that’s OK. That’s what I have to do now. I got a good foundation from being around the program.
“Barton was a great educational and athletic experience, Wine added. “I wouldn’t change it if I had to. It was right for me.”
