MAAC Coaching Spotlight – Niagara’s Rob McCoy
Edison, N.J. (May 26, 2020) – Niagara University Baseball Head Coach Rob McCoy sat down with the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) to provide insights on the Niagara program, the canceled 2020 season, and discussed some of the best collegiate ballparks he has been to. McCoy, the winningest coach in Niagara baseball history, entered his 12
th season at the helm of the program in 2020.
Q: What is the rivalry with crosstown foe Canisius like?
A: Up until the last couple of years it really hasn’t been much of a rivalry. I think we were closing the gap, and I think this team was going to be different. From a school perspective, it’s huge. It’s pretty fun. I don’t think there is any true animosity, just some jokes back and forth and the way that both fan bases give it to the other fan bases. From a coach’s perspective, I don’t take it all that seriously because it’s just another team in our league that we want to beat. But it makes for fun times when the athletic department talks about the “school down south”. It’s nice to have a team so close though that is a natural rival who can really compete. It makes for exciting basketball games too. As a baseball team though that is a goal. We circle them every year and try to make sure we can help the athletic department for the Battle of the Bridge.
Q: What does a player like Matthew Brash, selected in the fourth round of the 2019 MLB draft, mean to your program?
A: He’s outstanding. Anytime you have a guy like that, where when he pitches you have a great chance to win, is amazing. You know, he's one of the best guys to ever play here, to ever pitch here. To be able to have him and have him develop the way he did, you know, it’s hard to put into words. We recruit our whole careers to find guys like that, the diamonds in the rough. Someone like him is so good that you’re confident you can get a win every time he pitches. He’s a great kid, he has a special arm and we are looking forward to watching his pro career whenever all of this ends.
Q: What do you normally do during the MLB draft?
A: We’ve had six or seven pros in the last six years. We don’t necessarily do anything together. I sit at home and watch the draft. Based on talking to people and scouts and people around the draft, we have a pretty good idea on where our kids may go, so we just keep an eye on it. I always call the kid after he ends up getting drafted to congratulate him, once he has a chance to sit down and talk to his family and what not. That’s pretty much it, it’s not a big event on my end, but for the student-athlete it’s really special watching his pro career begin.
Q: Did you have a favorite MLB team growing up? Favorite player?
A: Not really, I just liked baseball so much, I just watched all Major League Baseball. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, so I would watch the Mariners a lot and the Yankees because they were always on TV. The teams that were on national TV, the Cubs back then and the Braves on TBS. You know, I would just watch baseball every night no matter who was on.
Q: What do you miss most about your playing days at Dakota Wesleyan? What position did you play and what were some of your stats?
A: I was a center fielder and I don’t really remember any of my stats. But I just enjoyed being on a team. I just enjoyed the competition, competing with your guys, with your fellow teammates, the trips, everything about it. That’s why I do what I do for a living. Everything about college baseball I love. I parlayed that into coaching because I love everything about college baseball and I love teaching the game. The combination of all of that from my playing days is what I love the most.
Q: How do you like to construct your team? Do you have any extra emphasis on hitting, fielding, or pitching?
A: No, I think we just try to recruit the most athletic players. There’s a lot of different philosophies when it comes to what kind of recruits coaches like, but we just try to get guys with a good work ethic. It’s amazing, the development that can take place for a kid over a four-year span. There’s a lot of good players that will max out their ability early in their careers, and there’s others that are just more raw and more athletic and work just as hard or harder. So, we look for high-ceiling guys and hope we hit on them. As the years have gone on, we have gotten better at that. Guys that are athletic, guys that are easy to work with, and guys that have high ceilings.
Q: What are some of the best ballparks you’ve been able to bring your team to?
A: Yeah, wow. The best, based on just the experiences that we’ve had, Dick Howser Stadium at Florida State. It’s fantastic. Its not the fanciest one, but it’s the most iconic. The ambiance and everything in that park is just great. We’ve played at the University of Virginia and that stadium is fantastic. A sneaky really nice stadium, Wichita State, another fantastic stadium. We’ve played at Vanderbilt, another great one. There’s a handful of placed we’ve been, I’m trying to think if there is anything else. But some of these facilities are just second to none.
Q: What was your personal reaction to the canceled season? How were student-athletes informed and what was their reaction?
A: Believe it or not I wasn’t all that surprised. We left for a very long road trip on March fourth, heading out west towards the Coronavirus out in Washington. At that time, that’s where it was starting, New York wasn’t really affected up to that point. There was a little hesitation on the team, so I had to tell everybody that, hey listen, if you feel uncomfortable going out there, I understand, you just have to let me know. We were out there and with every passing day we saw something new. People stopped shaking hands with each other, the MAAC wanted us to stop doing that after games. We saw what as happening with the basketball tournaments. By the time the day came that we were heading home, I believe it was March 12, we were in Boise, Idaho getting on a plane. Before we got on the plane, I had to have a conversation, saying hey, these are some things that are happening. The Ivy League canceled their season, so at that point I knew it wasn’t good. We landed in Denver, I talked to our Athletic Director Simon Gray. He said games in March were canceled but if you are on the road you can stay on the road, I’ll update you when you land in Pittsburgh. I told the guys that in Denver and a couple of the guys asked me, coach, what do you actually think is going to happen? I was like, to be honest with you, I wouldn’t be surprised if they called us home when we land. So, we landed and my phone blew up. JMU had canceled, more leagues had canceled, and Simon [Gray] called me and said you need to get on the bus and come north back home instead of south, the season was canceled. I got the guys together in the airport and told them there. We got on the bus and headed north instead of south. That was actually the last time I saw the guys on my team. That’s how it went down. I wasn’t really that surprised, I think it shocked a lot of the players. I don’t know why I thought that. We had a good thing going, a lot of our seniors were in a good place. I told them that this is something we had to do for public health. Its not ideal, but we need to put others in front of ourselves. The NCAA granted an extra year and six of my seven seniors said they would be coming back. For me, its kind of just taking advantage of my time being home now, learn some new techniques and technologies from a distance and educating the guys with an alumni series and hoping we can start over again once the fall hits.
Q: What were your thoughts on the season before it was canceled? Did anybody stand out?
A: I was just excited in general. We beat Florida State on opening day and that was kind of the catalyst for the direction we were heading. We got two series wins after that and went and played a really good Washington State team and had some good games against them. We got a win against Boise State and we were 6-10 with another week or two of non-conference play I think. The guys were gelling like they never had before. The comradery and selflessness was great, everybody was on board. Not just the guys that were there, but the guys that didn’t travel. The guys that were on the team but weren’t fortunate to go with us. Everyone was celebrating every success. It was going to be a really special year, I was excited about that. From an individual perspective, that was the beauty of it. Every night we had someone new step up, it wasn’t just one guy, they wouldn’t even want the recognition of being singled out because they were all just happy that the others were having a great start.
Q: How does this affect your recruiting efforts?
A: Well, first of all, there’s not much to recruit because we all have full rosters. It’s different. We’re forced to be online and learn some new things and learn new ways to communicate with guys. But it’s not that much different I suppose. We’re pretty set if you think about what our roster will look like the next few years, we have all the guys we need. But we are still actively recruiting players. We just want to make sure we bring the right guys into our team. We aren’t trying to bring in 10 guys and cut 10 guys, we are loyal to our team and to the guys we brought in. It’s not urgent but it’s interesting. It’s more of just a professional development time with access to all these tools now, so it’s been good to be able to take a step back and be with my family and develop professionally. We spend some time every day talking about recruits and what we want our team to look like in the future, but it hasn’t been a mad dash to get out there. Nobody knows what will happen, if they will expand our rosters to alleviate the stress of having too many guys. We have to know if we will pay for grad school for all of our players. Players will have an extra year now, and that trend will continue for a few years, so we will definitely have to think outside the box if nothing else.
Q: What do you look for in a student-athlete when recruiting?
A: I mean, at the end of the day, we want somebody who wants to be a Niagara Baseball player. We have a very strict core value system that makes up the acronym EAGLES; Excellence, Accountability, Grit, Love, Energy, Selfless. We basically bring kids in and show them everything we do and everything we are, let them meet our guys. We don’t hide from anything. We show them all the good and all the bad. We basically say if you aren’t 100 percent in, just say no, and we are ok with that because we want guys to be all in. We’ve structured our program to weed-out guys who aren’t 100 percent committed to become better people, better students, and better athletes. We look for some of those qualities, those guys who are tough and have excellence in what they do, but if they slip through and we bring them on campus and see that they aren’t 100 percent in, we embrace the no. We seek out the no, we don’t avoid getting told no because at the end of the day we want the best player for our team and we want a solid outcome for the kid too. If its not a fit at Niagara, we wish him well and hope he finds a fit somewhere else. Just finding a kid that fits our culture, because we know that if they fit our culture and follow our values, they will be a big success on and off the field.
Q: Recruits come from so many different places. Where are some of the different places that you have found student-athletes?
A: Oh, everywhere. We’ve been everywhere. We’ve looked in every state and under every rock. We’ve gotten kids from everywhere. Kids from Curacao all the way up to British Columbia, every province I believe. I’m trying to think. Almost every state, you’d be hard pressed to find a state that we haven’t found a kid from over my time here. Maybe not the deep south, we haven’t gotten any Alabama, Mississippi, or Georgia kids, but just about everywhere else we’ve had a kid from there.
Q: How do you stay in contact with your team during the pandemic?
A: From the beginning of it we have had a group chat that we run. It was kind of just messages here and there, I wanted to let them settle in and sort of see their new reality. None of them really wanted to focus on school. I know they had much more time, but at this point with baseball being totally second-fiddle I didn’t want to shove more onto them. We didn’t require a lot of stuff. We just went back and forth. We had this daily routine challenge where every day a guy would post a video to the chat of what his day was like with school and baseball, just so we could stay in touch and comment on it. We shut down for a few weeks for finals, but after that, around May 12 we could do out of season stuff eight hours a week. I had just recently started an alumni series where we get on a Zoom call and talk to an alum who has been very successful out of Niagara, and they talk to the team about what helped them get there and any advice they have. Just to get everyone back together as the summer rolls along. We will just play it by ear.
Q: What have you personally been doing during the pandemic?
A: I’m really just enjoying this time with my family. I have a three-month-old daughter and a nine-year-old step son. It’s been really nice to be there with them and watch them develop and everything. As coaches, we are always drilling away because there is always somebody working, recurring, getting better. It’s part of that competitive nature. It’s an interesting situation to be in, to be told that we basically can’t do anything or go anywhere. I’ve just been embracing it, trying to find the good in things. Spending time with my family. We’re still working. Working on recruiting, working on our current team, still working on development plans and a fall plan with what that will look like and the scheduling. It’s been a unique couple of weeks for sure. Not just for me, but for all of these coaches who have never really had time like this in their lives to just sit back and enjoy. And the professional development piece as well, there is inspiration all over. We’ve had time to sit back and learn more about coaching and everything.
Q: What are you looking forward to most about getting back on campus?
A: Just the guys, I miss being around the guys. I know it will be different at first because we will have to take steps to mitigate contact and all that, but I just miss the guys and being with them and teaching and watching them be successful. I think any coach would answer the same way. We do what we do because we love it. If we only loved the wins and losses then we wouldn’t put as much effort into it all year round. It’s the comradery, the coaching staff, the players, the people we work with. We are people persons. That’s the thing I miss the most. That’s the first thing I’m going to do. Re-establish those relationships and the time given towards that effort.
About the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference:
With 11 institutions strongly bound by the sound principles of quality and integrity in academics and excellence in athletics, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) is in its 39
th year of competition during the 2019-20 academic year. Current conference members include: Canisius College, Fairfield University, Iona College, Manhattan College, Marist College, Monmouth University, Niagara University, Quinnipiac University, Rider University, Saint Peter’s University, and Siena College.