National League Training Staff at the 2023 Major League All-Star Game on July 13. Left to right: Anthony Reyes, athletic trainer, San Francisco Giants; Tomas Vera, athletic trainer, Cincinnati Reds; and Greater Pittston native and resident Dustin Clarke, New York Mets.
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Dustin Clarke, Mets’ strength coach, gets call for All-Star Game
2005 Seton Catholic graduate and New York Mets Strength and Conditioning Coach Dustin Clarke, right, poses with Mets starting pitcher Kodai Senga at Media Day at the 2023 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
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Dustin Clarke (second row, far right, blue shirt) was chosen the Strength and Conditioning Coach for the National League team for the 2023 Major League Baseball All-Star Game, at Seattle, Washington.
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New York Mets Strength and Conditioning Coach Dustin Clarke, left, stands with New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso at the All-Star Game at Seattle.
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Three and a half-year-old twins Logan, left, and Adelyn, right, sit with mom Angela, and dad Dustin at their father’s office, Citi Field, home of the New York Mets where he is the head strength and conditioning coach.
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DURYEA – It’s not every day we have people from Greater Pittston affiliated with professional sports, but for 2005 Seton Catholic graduate Dustin Clarke, you can include him on that list.
Clarke, at 35 years old, has been the Major League strength and conditioning coordinator for the New York Mets since 2015, a position he does not take for granted.
Prior to his rise up the strength and conditioning ladder, he received his BS and MS degrees in Exercise Science from East Stroudsburg University.
He currently is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and Registered Strength and Conditioning Coach (RSCC) through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA), and is USA Weightlifting Level 2 and Functional Movement Screen Level 1 certified.
Right out of college in 2008, he lined up a job at Drexel University before moving on the Lafayette College the following year and in 2010 he worked with the football team at the University of Michigan.
Eventually, he found his way into professional baseball starting with the New York Mets Gulf Coast League Short-Season team in 2011. He then moved up to Double-A ball with the Mets’ Binghamton team from 2012 to 2013.
The next year Clarke bounced back and forth between the Mets Double-A and Triple-A team at Las Vegas as a Minor League Strength and Conditioning Coordinator before being promoted to the big league team in 2015.
Needless-to-say, it’s been one heckuva ride for Clarke since his promotion into the big leagues.
He relocated to Port Saint Lucie to work with the Mets minor league team, got married to Wyoming Area graduate Angela Kleback in 2015, and had a set of twins (son Logan and daughter Adelyn) in 2019, before moving back to Greater Pittston in 2020.
“Since 2008, after finishing up at East Stroudsburg, I’ve been all over the place,” Clarke said. “With coaching your are chasing… chasing the job… chasing the dream, I guess you can say. Over the last two years with the kids and COVID, we moved home and now we’re in Duryea.”
In Clarke’s first year as head strength and conditioning coach with the Mets in 2015, the team went to the World Series.
“It was a wild time in 2015,” Clarke explained. “I got to be the head strength and conditioning job with the Mets, we went to the World Series, and I got married, it was a wild ride.”
Last week, Clarke had the privilege in being named the strength and conditioning coach for the 2023 Major League Baseball All-Star Game held in Seattle for the National League team.
It was is first time being selected out of all the strength and conditioning coaches in the National League. He’s hoping it’s not his last.
“It was unbelievable, a once in a lifetime experience,” Clarks said. “I hope it’s not only once, I hope I get the chance to do it again. You can never take these experiences for granted working with the elite especially, that’s the elite of the elite and it’s been an honor to be selected to be responsible for those guys.”
The only regret Clarke had about his All-Star trip to the west coast was he wished his son Logan could have been in the dugout for the Home Run Derby.
Now that the Clarkes have a home base in Greater Pittston, Clarke said he would love to give back to the community where he grew up.
“I’m trying to reconnect with the area and see what’s around and see where we are at and see how I can help out,” Clarke added. “We’d love to take our experiences and give back to the community. This area gave us a lot when we were kids. We played sports here and yeah, we’d love to give back.”
Back home, Clarke would ultimately like to conduct local clinics for coaches, athletic directors, and athletes on strength and conditioning in the future and maybe with the help of his wife, Angela.
Angela, a physical trainer by trade, is the former athletic trainer at Old Forge School District. She excelled in soccer and basketball while at Wyoming Area.
Although Clarke spends a good portion of the year on the road, he looks forward to his time at home in Greater Pittston in the off-season, but it’s not all rest and relaxation.
Over the winter, Clarke will occasionally travel all over the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Dominican Republic to check on Mets players.
Life has come full circle for the Clarkes, Dustin and Angela recently registered their twins to play Greater Pittston Stoners soccer this fall, the same program both had played when they were children growing up in the Pittston Area.
