Hall of Fame
Clay Elswick was a four-year letterwinner for coach Jim Ward’s EKU baseball team and started at first base his last three seasons from 1984-86 when the Colonels won the OVC championship each year and participated in three consecutive NCAA Regional Tournaments. A member of Eastern’s All-Century Baseball Team, Elswick capped off a fantastic collegiate career in 1986 when he was chosen as the OVC Player of the Year, a first-team All-South Region pick, a first-team Academic All-American selection, a third-team NCAA Division I All-American choice and collected first-team All-OVC honors, all while batting .426 with a single season school-record 20 home runs and 82 RBI’s. He still holds the EKU career record for most home runs with 52 and the career slugging percentage of .680. With a career .355 batting average, he batted .450 as a freshman, .305 as a sophomore and .312 as a junior. During his four years as a Colonel, Eastern won 128 games, including the school-record 42-win season of 1985. After playing his last game as a Colonel in 1986, he was the holder of 13 EKU single game, single season and career records after serving that season the 1986 year as co-captain. He graduated in 1986 with a bachelors degree in Biology, while minoring in Chemistry. Later that summer, he started in the doctoral program at Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa. He graduated from Palmer with a Doctorate of Chiropractic in 1989, moved back to Lexington and has been in private practice for the past 23 years. He is married to his high school sweetheart, Shelley Smith, also an EKU grad.
