White House reporter Eli Stokols: Coach Chris Conlin challenged, inspired his players

Eli Stokols attended the Celebration of Life for former coach Chris Conlin. (PHOTO: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).

Former University High School baseball standout Eli Stokols, who now covers the White House for Politico, has fond memories being coached by Chris Conlin, the long-time University High School coach who was honored during a celebration of life earlier this month.

There were plenty of life lessons, he said.

Conlin died on April 15, 2025 at the age of 71 after an illness surrounded by family friends.

“I was watching and listening to people and what Coach (Mike) Gerakos said about him with the red brick dust all over his feet I was thinking about this image of him on the field before practice, after practice, raking the dirt, watering the infield and the amount of time and care he put into just creating a place, a field, a program for not just me but for all these years and years and years of kids to come through and have a place to really grow but also to have just have fun,” Stokols said in an interview after the celebration at Friends Church in Yorba Linda.

“Being part of the Uni baseball program was the most important thing I did in high school, it’s the thing I remember the clearest, the friends I made and continue to be in touch with. It’s just a really special part of my life and my memories of growing up here and it was important to me. Coach, as people talked about, he was a pretty direct guy.

“As encouraging as he was he wouldn’t sugar coat things, so he was a big muscly guy and I came in at 14 years old and I was pretty spindly. I think he had a hard time seeing, ‘how is this guy going to develop and be anything in our program.’ I wasn’t the most athletic or the fastest and certainly not the biggest. And he would kind of let you know that you had a ways to go. And he was intimidating, especially coming in as a 14-year-old. He let you know, nothing was given and you had to earn it.

“It was really my first experience with that kind of situation and competition and being part of a program and having to work your way up to something. I can still remember some of our games our senior year in 1997, I can remember some of my better moments as a player and I can describe them to you very clearly. I think about the confidence I played with my senior year there and the way that team came together.

“You sort of appreciate it at the time but to go from a lot of self doubt and not being as good of a player but to being a better player and a more confident player on the field and being part of a group and all that confidence that I had on the field was because of the stuff that he and Coach (Paul) Serna and Coach Gerakos put me through and the challenge they laid down to you.

“High school baseball is sort of a singular experience but it does help you going forward whatever you do. To have someone who believed in you, but made you earn it, didn’t give you anything and let you know you were going to do it yourself and taught you how to be part of a team and a group, and we were really close.

“And it was also just fun. I think about all his little sayings and the ways he would kind of rib us. They had a good rapport and it was a really good environment and a good group and you feel all these years later lucky to be have been part of it.”

Celebrated league title

Stokols, who played two years with the varsity at University, remembers the 1997 season when the Trojans won the league title on the last day of the season.

“We all put a lot into it,” he said. “We won the league and we won our first CIF (playoff) game and then we had to play Mater Dei and we lost by one. I think Garrrett (Atkins) hit a ball that was caught on the warning track for the last out. I was on deck. It was sad when it ended, ends are tough, that was a really special group.”

Stokols then attended UC Berkley where he continued his baseball career and got his college education. He’s also a Columbia University School of Journalism graduate.

“I think maybe my confidence as a player going into a program that I really didn’t have any business playing in, a D-1 Pac-10 program as it was then, came from playing with Garrett and playing with this group and having a lot of success and being, ‘why not.’ I got to Cal and I thought these guys are really good, it was hard but I stuck with it and ending up traveling and pitching a little bit my senior year and earning a collegiate letter and I had times throughout college thought, ‘I don’t need to put the hours in, I don’t need to be a part of this program, it’s not my identity, I will go do something else,'” Stokols said.

“I stuck with it, in part because I had a lot of good friends in the program, as I did in high school, but I also probably stuck with it because of the experience I had in high school. You’re just building on the foundation you had already laid down, having people who push you and challenge you and support you.

“I got a (letterman) jacket that doesn’t fit me but it’s a nice symbol of my persistence in doing something that I probably had no business doing. I knew I wasn’t going to wind up in the Major Leagues but I’m glad I did it.”

Covered Little League

Besides baseball, Stokols also had an interest in journalism working during the summer for the Irvine World News and its sister paper in Mission Viejo at the age of 15. Stokols’ biggest story was covering South Mission Viejo Little League major all-stars, which wound up going to Williamsport for the Little League World Series.

“I do remember how much fun that summer was, taking the ride with those families all the way to the regional final in San Bernardino and being sad I had to go off to start college and couldn’t go with them to Williamsport,” he said.

“I can still remember a lot of the players from that team and the coach, Jim Gattis, was a lot of fun to get to know and talk to. When I told him I was going up to Cal to play baseball that fall, he invited me out to a team practice and tried to show me a few grips to play with to develop a cutter. Great baseball guy. 

“That team was the first story I ever got latched onto that was a running story, not a one-off piece. And I got fairly wrapped up in it. Maybe that’s a no-no in journalism even when you’re covering a Little League team. But being only a few years removed from my own Little League days, which I shared with my own dad, it felt very personal watching these kids and families have so much success and joy on this journey together.

“I remember being so impressed by their abilities at such a young age, by Gattis who gave them so much baseball knowledge and helped them succeed while remembering that they were all just kids, by the connections between the families in the stands; and the way all of them were so welcoming to me. I don’t cover many ‘feel good’ stories these days, but I’ll always remember that one.” 

White House reporter

Stokols path led him to work in Denver and then to Washington D.C where he has been covering politics for 10 years. He started at Politico, then the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times before returning to Politico about two and a half years ago. He’s also had guest television appearances on CNN and MSNBC.

Covering the White House and President Donald Trump has been demanding but fulfilling, he indicated.

“In some ways it’s easy because they make so much news you just try to catch up and there is always stuff to write about it but it’s challenging sussing out new information and finding out what’s going on as it is in any White House like that,” he said. “There’s a lot of people on the beat so it’s competitive. It feels like it’s important but it’s a grind. I would never say that I don’t appreciate the uniqueness of the opportunity to be in that building and to sit in the briefing room or to occasionally fly on Air Force One and to ask the president questions.

“But it’s a tough job and it’s a lot of work and there is a lot of competition. It is an intense beat. This president makes news at all hours of the day and sometimes you’re putting to kids to bed at 7:30 and your phone rings and your editor is on the line wanting to know why the hell you don’t have the story. You got to figure how to deal with that.

“I was lucky to come up with something when I was a teenager and sort of had a clear sense of what I wanted to do and to be able to go off and do it.”

Advice for others

Stokols also had advice for those wanting to enter the journalism field.

“Persistence, I guess. It’s not an easy time for the industry, people need journalism, they need to know what’s going on at the local level, I would say even more so than the national level, there are a lot of journalists in D.C. and New York talking about our federal government, he said. “There are not a lot of places who are still investigating local news and that’s hard.

“Don’t do it to get rich. But if you believe in it and you are good at it, we need people to come along who want to chase stories and find things out and shine a light on stuff and people who are good at that will always find that if you work hard, the information is still the commodity so the platforms are different and the business is different. But if you’re good at sussing out what is happening and telling a story, you will probably find somewhere to land and do that job.”

Stokols and his wife Elena have two boys Ryne, 2 (named after Stokols favorite players former Cub Ryne Sandberg) and Charlie, 4 and live in Washington, D.C.

“My parents are still in the same house I grew up in so a lot of ties there with them and their friends, trips are a little different now when you come out with two little ones, but they love running around going to the beach,” Stokols said.

Stokols acknowledged dealing with Coach Conlin’s death.

“This is obviously a sad occasion,” Stokols said. “You wish the circumstances were different but it’s been a while since I’ve seen a lot of these guys. Life takes you in different directions. It’s been nice the last day or so getting to catch up with guys you spend your entire high school years with, hour and hours at a time.”

—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com