The Press Box series chronicles the great lessons coaches give at press conferences into how they created their championship teams. Featured this month are insights from first-time coaches at the College World Series, Skylar Meade from Troy University and Stave Sabins from West Virginia.

Skylar Meade – Troy Head Coach

I think it’s a good reminder to me – and I think there was a time where, if I’m being totally honest — we’ve had so many things really going on in the last 15 months. I think I’d be remiss if I said that maybe I didn’t catch myself couple times not appreciating their growth. I’ll battle my lock-in versus anybody. That doesn’t mean I’m the best. I’m definitely not the smartest or whatever, but locked in.

We will tell them if something’s not good enough. I don’t MF players, let’s make sure that’s clear, for the record. And I think sometimes, like, we all worry — oh, don’t challenge this guy or don’t do this, he’ll go in the portal. If he goes in the portal, okay, whatever, who cares? We’ll get good players. You know what I mean? But you’ve gotta have guys who are in the foxhole with you. So you can’t forget to be whatever your culture is.

Coach Schlossnagle is one of the greatest coaches in the world. I don’t know what his culture is. I’m not privy to that,right? Coach Bianco, all these guys, I don’t know what they are. But I bet what’s made them incredibly successful and what I hope to do in my career is to always stay true to what I really am and what I value in communicating with people. And if I don’t do that or I drop two or three percent of that, then I’m not doing the best job possible.

And I think that reminding yourself of that and then the players show you the way to do it, that’s why I credit, not just the seniors, although they certainly deserve a lot because a lot of those guys have been here for a couple years, but it’s all the players. And if guys can’t handle that, then they were never going to be winners for us. And that is the cold hard truth of how things work in this day and age.
And that’s a huge part – as a head coach there are things you like. I like home runs and I like velocity, that’s cool. But you know what? Our team’s never going to be scared. That’s a cool thing to have said about it.

And that’s the players. You can message all you want and be confident and bravado-ish, you know, as a coach and coaches. But when your team shows that every time that you compete, you can sit there — I ran into Coach Kingston, who I worked for, and he used to say this about a player on our team. He’s like, “Hey, I’m okay if we lose with him.”

I’m not okay losing, I don’t want my words misconstrued. But when your guys fight at that level, you’re not sitting there going, “Well, they had something in the tank.” Our guys, they emptied the clip.

Culture is like a program thing, and I utilize culture a lot.

But each year you still have your own individualized identity. Look, we all think we’re smart. Of course I think I’m smart. I have to be. I can’t be an idiot and try to lead a program. But you don’t totally know what your guys are made of or how to make them what you hope they are day one, and I think with our guys, there was a learning curve.

We had a ton of new players. They’re very talented. But sometimes when you’re very talented, maybe you expect it to go easy. I think that’s a fair thing that happens from time to time.

And for us, we had to figure out how to push buttons within them to get them to be their best version. But then the biggest part of credit goes to the players to understand if we’re challenging them, we’re on them, we’re pushing, nodding, prodding on them, “Hey, this is why we’re doing it, because it means you’re awesome. But we’re not going to let you just be very good. We need you to be awesome. We need you to be great. We need you to be elite.” And it took us some time to do that.

But within all of that, fearless means you have an insane level of confidence. Nobody that’s fearless is shaking on the edge of the cliff before they jump, right? They’re not. They’re standing there going, “I’m about to jump and I don’t care.” And I think our guys, once they realize how to do that individually and collectively, that’s why we are where we are. It doesn’t mean we win a national championship. It’s the hardest thing to do in all of sports, especially our sport.

But they’ve maximized their fearlessness and what’s expected and asked in our culture. And for me, that’s why I’m not going to sit here and enter that bus in a second and say, “Oh, man, so and so” — no, every person that traveled, every person that suited up today, they gave us exactly what we asked for, and to me that’s how you’re fearless and you have an elite culture.

Steve Sabins – West Virginia Head Coach

Skill develops. It’s not always talent, where in some other major sports, talent is always king. Sometimes just growth and strength and skill. And when strength meets skill, you can start to get really good. There’s like this evolution of baseball players. That’s why you can always see great players at all these different levels.

So if you’re courageous enough as a coach like Skylar Meade is, I think this Division II guy can take us to Omaha without feeling too crazy, and you’d really trust your gut and your evaluation, then those things can happen. I think a lot of times those D-II kids, things haven’t always been easy for them, and there’s been some adversity along the way, and that matters in this sport. And the development hasn’t always been easy. So when you get to a great program that has those resources, they’re so thankful for them and they take advantage of them every day.
For me I’ve got a little bit of a soft spot because I was a walk-on at a junior college. And I played at Division I, and then I ended up playing at an NAIA school that’s now D-II. And so I just remember throughout my journey, there’s some guys on the team who are like, “I’m pretty sure that guy’s way better than the guy that I was at Division I with.” Or the three-hole hitter for Angelina Junior College, that guy should be banging in the Big 12, right?

But there’s just a lot of factors, whether it’s where they’re from or their background, or their grades at that time, or if they were able to play in certain tournaments. So I think part of the fun in recruiting is trying to find those guys that maybe are a little bit undervalued.
So I want people to know that our culture means a lot to us and that this thing has been built by people, and it’s been built by our staff, and it’s been built on the belief that you can accomplish anything that you want if you have the belief. And that’s what this place is all about.
Our state is a state that’s really rooted in unity and rooting for each other and believing that anything is possible — and it’s a little bit of a chip on the shoulder kind of state. It’s a small rural state that thinks that things haven’t always gone their way. You’ve got to fight extra hard and work extra hard and you’ve got to show up longer and harder in order to accomplish great things. So that’s kind of the mentality that our team has taken.

I think this was game 61 for the Mountaineers. And in order to get here at West Virginia, you’re practicing long, hard days. When you get back from Christmas break, you’re in sleet, and you’re in snow, and you’re in freezing temperatures.
We travel as much as anybody in the nation. We got Cincinnati in the league now, so every couple of years you get a bus trip. But other than that, we’re bussing an hour and a half to the Pittsburgh airport and then flying out of there across the country, often times, to small college towns. Got another two or three hours on that side.

And so playing 61 games together, the amount of hotel eggs that you’ve eaten together and the amount of time that you’ve spent together and the amount of adversity and the ups and downs, you just end up becoming really close with the team because things happen in life. Parents get sick and grandparents die and school happens and girlfriends happen, and you just grow with these guys.
And I think the tighter and the more you win, the closer the group gets together. So, I think some of that grit just comes from trusting each other and kind of letting go of whatever, like, “What happens to me individually happens. Let’s go fight for something bigger than ourselves.”

And so I think grit is more based on love and relationships, probably, than being mean and angry on the field. It’s more about “Dude, you’re giving your best, I’m giving my best. We’ll go to war together. Whatever happens, happens.”

They know that the staff’s staying up 12 hours a day doing scouting reports. We know that they’re going to bed on time and hydrating and making good choices and bringing positive energy and representing the program with class. It’s just a unity.

At a certain point, like when Armani [Guzman] scored on that steal home, he pops up and he points at me, I’m pointing to him at the same time. It was just a natural thing. It wasn’t like we planned that, right? But it’s like giving credit to each other and working together. These guys are as much peers as anything.