MAAC Coaching Spotlight – Manhattan’s Mike Cole
Via NCAA.org
Edison, N.J. (June 16, 2020) – Manhattan Baseball Head Coach Mike Cole sat down with the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) to provide insights on the Manhattan program, the canceled 2020 season, and his favorite team and player growing up. Cole entered his third year as the Head Coach of the Jaspers during the shortened 2020 season, having previously spent time with the program from 2005-2008.
Q: How long does it take to build a team at this level after taking over the program?
A: It's actually pretty difficult. I think as a head coach, your job as soon as you get there is to try and continue what they've done in the past and try to move forward. You're obviously going to take over a program with student-athletes that you did not recruit, but as the head coach they are now part of your program. For it to be your own program, it really is going to take four years to get all of your recruits on campus. It starts as soon as you take over.
Q: How do you like to construct your team? Do you have any extra emphasis on hitting, fielding, or pitching?
A: There's been a lot of changes in baseball recently, in the last 10 to 15 years. Analytics and the home run have become a big part of the game, but for the last 200 years, pitching and defense has won. First and foremost, to look at the past MAAC champions, it's been pitching dominated. We are going to try and go out and get some pitching that will give us a chance. Good pitching gives you a chance to win every time you take the field. On the offensive side, we're looking for athletes. We're going to recruit shortstops, center-fielders, and catchers, guys that are playing the middle of the field and we'll move them around when they get to college. We're looking for athletes. Guys that run, guys that are going to give us quality at bats. We aren’t necessarily looking for super power hitters, but we are looking for contact hitters to put pressure on the defense.
Q: What is the feeling of returning to Riverdale after spending time on the staff from 2005-2008?
A: Manhattan always holds a special place in my heart. I've been able to coach a couple of different schools. The one thing about Manhattan, the first time here we had some really good teams and we had a ton of success. So, it was obviously fun winning when I was here. The one thing I'm going to add is just the smaller school feel. Like most of the schools in the MAAC, it's definitely family oriented. I think our athletic department is a close-knit group where everybody's pushing for everybody. At some of the bigger schools it's more corporate and more business, whereas at the smaller schools, where we don't have 10 people in the compliance department and 20 people in the training room, your schools are scaled down. Everybody's working with everybody and helping each other to move forward. That was the one thing I took away from the first four years that I was there, and coming back I knew that was what I wanted to get back to. I also knew that Manhattan was a place to win and compete for MAAC Championships.
Q: A native of Poughkeepsie and a former Fairfield coach, is there extra excitement when you play Marist or Fairfield?
A: Playing Marist, it’s definitely great to come home to Poughkeepsie, I usually have family and friends in the crowd. I grew up in the area, I grew up going to Marist basketball games when I was a kid, so it's always good to go back to Poughkeepsie. As far as Fairfield, I live there now. I had an opportunity to coach there for five years and it's special. We won the MAAC Championship in 2016 and they will always have a spot in my heart. The head coach at Fairfield, Bill Currier, I played for him at UVM and I coached with him at UVM. I coached with him at Fairfield. So that's a special thing, to come play a team that you coached at but also playing against your mentor and boss and definitely one of my closest friends in the baseball industry.
Q: You mentioned playing at UVM, what do you miss most about your playing days?
A: I think that every athlete will tell you that when they get done playing, it’s the camaraderie with your teammates on and off the field that is something you definitely miss. The competition aspect of the game is what you want, we like to compete, we like to win, and I think as a coach most would say the same thing. The competition is why we are still in the game. We aren’t swinging the bat or throwing pitches but we still have an opportunity when the umpire says play ball, we are going to compete.
Q: What emotions do you have when one of your student-athletes is drafted into the MLB?
A: It's awesome as a coach when you're recruiting student-athletes, every high school kid that gets on campus or any baseball player that's played at a high level always sees himself going on to the next level, becoming a professional player. I don't think most people on the outside understand how difficult that is. Two percent of college athletes actually have a chance to go play baseball professionally. So, when you have one of your own guys get selected, it's a huge moment for the student and it's a huge moment for his family as well as a great moment for our institution. Just to see all the work that those kids put in leading up to the draft and having their goal come to a realization that they are going to be a professional athlete, that’s one of the best things about being a head coach.
Q: What was your favorite MLB team growing up? Did you have a favorite player you based your play off of?
A: Yeah, I grew up in Poughkeepsie and I was a diehard Mets fan. I actually grew up in a divided household, where my dad was a Yankees fan and my mom was a Mets fan. I went to opening day 15 years in a row for the Mets and my mother went 40 years in a row. My favorite player growing up was Lenny Dykstra. He was a tough, hardnosed player, and I think that’s how I played the game. I wasn’t the most athletic guy in the world, but I definitely put my time in off the field to get the most out of my game. Lenny was that type of player early in his career.
Q: What are your thoughts on Richmond County Bank Ballpark in Staten Island, home of the MAAC Baseball Championships?
A: I think it's a great experience for our student-athletes. You know, I think the MAAC does a great job of putting together the championship in Staten Island. It's one of the premier ballparks in the area. I think our guys, and every team in our conference, look forward to going into the playoffs, just having the opportunity to play in New York City and to play at a great field. You know, it's the atmosphere. As always, they do a great job. The atmosphere is always amped up a little bit. The guys really, really look forward to having a chance to play in Staten Island.
Q: What was your personal reaction to the canceled season? How were student-athletes informed and what was their reaction?
A: Well, as a head coach, you're going to have silos. You know what I think? I think baseball is great in the aspect that you're going to fail a lot more than you're going to succeed. Our guys are used to some ups and some downs, but this was definitely the hardest thing that I had to encounter as a coach for over 20 years. I think the other teams in our conference and the other programs around the country, nobody on the outside really knows how much work goes into getting yourself ready and prepared for the actual season. Our seasons normally start the first week of June with our guys playing summer ball for two and a half months. Then you have another three months of fall with individual and team practice, and the guys lifting three or four times a week. Then we have a month until we get back on campus where it's six days a week of practice and just the amount of time and effort that they put into getting prepared, to go and have that taken away from them was difficult. It was difficult, obviously, for our seniors. We have a couple of kids coming back, but we also have a couple of kids that will never put the uniform on again, and will probably never play competitive baseball again. That was the tough part. We had a meeting that Thursday afternoon and just the look on their faces, it was difficult. These guys, when they get to campus, for the most part, they’re kids. When they leave, they're adults, they're men. I think as coaches, that's our job, obviously, to make them better baseball players, but to make them better people and better citizens as well. They're going to grow up and they're going to become better when they walk out the door. So, when you see a 22-year-old crying because he knows that he's never going to play baseball again, it's tough. It was definitely a tough situation. But again, I think we have some tough kids. It brings me back to my point of baseball prepares you for your life. Life isn't easy and I think our guys understand that. We'll get through it.
Q: What were your thoughts on the season before it was canceled?
A: We were definitely excited coming into this year. It was just trying to build from the year before. The year before, we lost to Quinnipiac in the winner’s bracket finals at Staten Island in the MAAC tournament. We started six freshmen last year. So, we had most of our lineup and the whole coaching staff coming back. We were definitely excited about trying to build on what we did last year and having a chance to compete for a championship. But I thought we did some really good things early in the season and we had an opportunity to come back to Van Cortland this year, which was another tough thing for us. For the seniors, it was the first time that we were coming back to Van Cortland in five years. Those guys are never going to have an opportunity to really play a home game there. That was another difficult situation with those guys. I think we were turning the corner and getting back to where we wanted to be. That was a tough part of getting shut down, because we had a young group, we had a hungry group that's ready to get after it and compete and try and get to our end goal of winning a championship.
Q: What do you look for in a student-athlete when recruiting, and how does the pandemic affect that?
A: Yeah, you know, first and foremost, I think all the schools in our conference are all very good academic schools. So, the first thing that we're going to look at is your grades. I think it's a direct correlation, how you do in the classroom. Not so much how you're going to do on the field, but how you're going to prepare. You're going to be coachable and you're going to show up to practice every day. So first and foremost, we look at their grades. Obviously, if there's a need that we need to fill, we will fill it. If we need a catcher, we're going to go out and try to find a catcher. But again, back to my point, from a positional standpoint, we're looking for athletes. We’re looking for guys that are physically strong, guys that can run a little bit, and guys who are going to give us competitive at bats. We're going to look for some physical kids that are going to be able to hold up during a 56-game schedule. From a pitching standpoint, most importantly, we're looking for guys who can throw two or three different pitches for strikes. Strike one has been the best pitch in baseball for the last 200 years. I think a lot of people get caught up in velocity. Throwing ninety-five is great, but if you can't throw strikes it doesn't really do much for us. So, we're looking for guys that compete in the strike zone and challenge hitters and can throw two or three pitches for strikes whenever they want. As far as recruiting moving forward, I think it's going to be different for a lot of us with everybody getting a year back. We're going to have an opportunity to have some of our guys back on campus. Also, I think with the transfer portals, it's usually around 150 to 200 guys in the transfer portal, but right now there's over a thousand. So, I think the next three or four years, the chance for guys in the transfer portal is going to be something that all coaches are going to be able to take advantage of. Being able to get a graduate senior that has one year of eligibility left to come and help us out for a year is big. So, from a recruiting standpoint, I think the group who's going to feel it the most are the high school kids. What I mean by that is, with the portal situation, would I rather have a twenty to twenty-three-year-old that understands what he's getting into or an eighteen-year-old kid that's going to be a freshman. I think a lot of those kids are going to pass by.
Q: What have you personally been doing during the pandemic? Have you been staying in contact with your student-athletes?
A: Yeah, we are. Obviously, myself and our coaches want to work with our team. I check in daily with, you know, five, six, seven guys a day just to see how they're doing. I think the biggest thing is, we're located in the city, which was hit as hard as anybody in the world. We do have some inner-city kids, most of our recruiting is in the tri-state. So, we've had a bunch of guys that were kind of right in the middle of the pandemic. Just talking with them and making sure they got through this. Secondly, the academic piece. Just making sure that our guys stayed on top of their work. They were taking courses online instead of being able to actually interact face to face with professors and students. But I think our guys did a great job with that. Thirdly, we just had to adjust to summer ball being canceled around the country. Our plan was to just put a schedule in front of them. I think the biggest thing for our guys, for any student-athlete, is when they're on campus their schedules are detailed. They're going to have class, going to have lunch, going to have practice in the weight room. When they get home and they don't have that same schedule, I think that was difficult for guys because their daily routine was turned upside down. So from a coaching standpoint, we just wanted to put something together where, as long as they were taking care of business in the classroom, they could work for an hour or two a day from a baseball standpoint so they are still getting better and getting physically stronger over this time. Just to give them a program that they can have something outlined for them to do every day.
Q: What are you looking forward to most about getting back on campus?
A: I think every coach would say the same thing, to get your guys back. You know, I think as a coach, the best part about the job is being able to interact with the guys around you, to see them get better daily. Besides my wife and my two kids, the 40 guys that we have in our program, that's my family. So just to get back on campus and to be around those guys, for our guys to get back together, I think it's going to be the most important thing. But that's definitely what I'm looking forward to the most.
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.