Matt Clark's official title at Richard Childress Racing is director of human performance and leadership development.

Translated into layman's terms, that means he's a high-tech pit-crew coach -- part of the new breed of pit-crew coaches who are turning the guys who go over the wall into their own brand of professional athletes.

“

I love middle infielders and how their hands and eyes are involved in handling the ball; [it's the same as] our guys handling the guns and lug nuts, tire indexes.

”

-- MATT CLARK

While admitting that there is some work still to be done in general in this regard across the garage area, Clark talked last weekend at Lowe's Motor Speedway about how he helped whip his guys into shape so that they were able to capture the recent Pit Crew Challenge championship. He also talked about his past as a small-college baseball coach in Connecticut, working with championship-winning pit crews while in a similar job at Hendrick Motorsports before coming to RCR, and what his father, a former street racer, taught him that he applies to everyday living.

Q: Was baseball your first love?

Clark: Absolutely. I'm a stick-and-ball sports guy. That's what I grew up doing. My dad was an old-school street racer -- pretty much the illegal type. As we were growing up, he really made a determination that we were going to stay in school and play sports, as opposed to going racing. But that was always in his blood. We always watched the Sunday races. We always flipped back [on the television] in between the races and WPIX with the Yankees' games, growing up in New England.

I grew up playing sports, played sports through high school, and played a little junior-college baseball. Then I ended up going back to coach and then going to work as an athletic administrator at a small Division III school [Albertus Magnus College] in New Haven, Connecticut. Athletics and coaching have really been a huge part of my life. I've been coaching for a long time, 20 years or more, at every level from T-ball kids up through college-age kids -- and I consider this the professional level in NASCAR. These guys I coach are professional athletes. (Continued)