WKU Baseball Head Coach Marc Rardin Introductory Press Conference

Director of Athletics Todd Stewart
Opening Statement:
"Thank you everybody for being here today as we culminate what we feel was a very in-depth coaching search with a very successful outcome. Before I get into things, I really want to thank two people specifically, John McCammon and Jim Clark. John is our current baseball sport supervisor, and Jim was the sport supervisor for many years prior to this past year. Both of those guys have been extremely helpful. They were in the weeds with me from day one on this and put a lot of time in, and I know they share my excitement as well in terms of where we are today. From a big picture standpoint, as you all know, we've won 36 championships since we entered Conference USA, and that's eight more than the next closest school. Nine sport programs have been a part of that, but unfortunately baseball has not. It's been 13 years since WKU Baseball has been in the NCAA Tournament. That's something that we hope to change and something that needs to change. So, when our job opened up there were a lot of things that we were looking at but we needed a winner, we needed a leader and we needed somebody that has a history of player development. With Marc, that's what we had. He checked every box in that. First of all, his success as a current head coach is incredible. When you look at the resume, 934 career wins, he's been to 12 junior college world series, he's won three national championships and has been national coach of the year three times. That's just a remarkable level of accomplishment. Honestly, beyond winning, we needed to find somebody that we felt was the perfect fit for our program. You know, fit is always important. We need energy and passion in our program, and I don't think that's any great secret. We lack energy right now. When you're around Marc, you're going to quickly realize he brings the energy and passion every day to everything that he does. I talked before about head coaching experience, and head coaching experience is important, but more important is winning head coaching experience. The numbers speak for themselves. He's been a winner every single year that he's been a head coach. We need somebody that can identify players with potential and develop them into even better players and that's a hallmark of his entire career. Every year that he's been a head coach that has happened. The last thing is, and all of us here feel that it's important, is that when our athletes leave here that they're prepared for life after college. In talking to Marc and doing the research that we did and just being around him and seeing the way former players have reached out to him, when he and I talked one of the times, he talked about teaching life survival skills and that's just instilling into his players the attributes that are necessary to be successful in life away from baseball. If you look at some of the things that a lot of the players have posted over the last couple of days, it's just been impressive. Not surprising because it's what we learned about Marc, but it's been impressive to see what they give him credit for off the baseball field and the impact he's had on their life off the baseball field. When you add all that up, the individual next to me here today is a winner. He's a perfect fit and I couldn't be more excited to introduce the new WKU head baseball coach, Marc Rardin."

On the coaching search process:
"Every coaching search really is extremely important because obviously it's a big decision, but you're also impacting lives when you make a decision on who your head coach is. You're impacting the lives of all of the current players, you're certainly impacting the lives of the coaching staff and the person that you hire and you impact certainly the lives of your future players. The most important thing is to get it right, and sometimes they take different amounts of time. I would say with this one it was pretty typical of most coaching searches. Marc let us know early on that he was interested in the job, and we let him know early on that we were interested in him."

Head Coach Marc Rardin
Opening Statement:
"Long day coming, in a lot of ways. There are so many things that check the boxes in my life with this day to happen. I'm going to start this all off with; I didn't play anywhere great, I wasn't a great player and I didn't have a pedigree starting off when I got done playing and going into coaching. From day one, I had to work, I had to grind, I had to make a name for myself and I had to learn so much. I was very fortunate that, number one, that was instilled in me growing up on a farm in northeast Iowa. The humility to be able to know to just keep working and you will make something. Doing things right, and that's what I did. I put in a lot of years to get to this point. It's the same thing that my wife and I teach to our own two sons. You probably even saw a tweet that my son put out when this was announced. He was talking about my hard work and being a grinder and who he's learned from, so that's big for me.

I'm a passionate dude. My wife says 'kids say that's intensity, Marc, not passion' – it's passion for me. It's passion for my two sons, it's passion for this game, it's passion for the Hilltoppers and for me being here. That is me, to start with. I've worked to get here and I know that Todd [Stewart], John [McCammon] and Jim [Clark] appreciated that as we've built this relationship and learned about me and about this place – that's big for me. You win with people, and you need to go get players, but they need to be the right people. Part of that is recruiting them and getting to know them and part of that is helping them continue to develop when they're 18, 19, 20, 21 and going through at Western Kentucky. For me, I had my eye on this program for probably 10 years. When it came open and this availability of it and timing of things working out, I'm blessed. My wife is two hours away from home, she grew up in Louisville… We've had chances to be around the area before but it just wasn't the fit and this one came about, so that's a bonus for us with family. My father-in-law is here, who's probably one of my biggest fans. I told him he needs to wear something other than blue, I can take care of that. I thank him for being here. I'm a grinder; I am a people-person. It started off with the interest of the program and then all of a sudden you start getting to talk with people later on and then all of a sudden that instant connection comes. To be honest with you, from five minutes of talking when we talked, it was over the moon for me knowing that I'm being around the right people and that I was still wanting to be part of this and do this. I'm trying not to be so excited and out there, I don't want to freak people out. But, I do have a lot of passion. I do have a lot of excitement. I do have a lot of energy. It's just who I am. At 51 years old, no one's going to outwork me; no one's going to come into a room and not know that I'm around there too. I'll be a walking billboard for Hilltopper Baseball and for the university in general and the town of Bowling Green.

For us, this program, I'm just wanting to get the right kids and the kids need to know we're here now. The kids need to know what this place is about. The kids need to know that we're relevant and we're about ready to be really relevant. In today's spectrum of the transfer portal and junior college baseball and with so much baseball that's actually out there with all the events coming out of high school. There are so many players out there. The number one thing is the players, there are so many of them out there, they need to know about us. That's a big thing for me. I've been trying to reach out to the current roster and I've got to some of them and I'm trying to reach out to more. That's going to happen again within the next 12-14 hours. My evenings are usually about three hours of sleep and the rest of it is working. I'm trying to get to every kid that's on this roster right now. I'm trying to talk to them, and I need to know about them, and they need to know about me. That's a big thing for me. The positivity and the excitement that we're going to have going into this fall is going to be the most excitement and positivity that an 18-win team from the year before will ever have. Last year doesn't matter. Ten years ago doesn't matter, and 20 years. The kids, they don't care, I don't care. We're going to worry about when we walk onto campus this fall. It is this team's time to make this relevant. To let this place know and let college baseball know that Western Kentucky has the resources. It has been lying here in wait. I know every program across the country, and they know me. When you're a good junior college for 20 years and you have players that are Division I players and players that are getting recruited across the country, I know every coach out there. I've become friends with them throughout 20 years. I have over 500 texts and I have about 50 calls that I haven't quite gotten back to yet and they're all saying the same thing 'wow, gold mine'. We're educated in this business. We know what's out there and what's not out there. There's a reason why my wife and I wanted this, and these guys are actually backing that up when they're talking to me about what this place is. The excitement is there and the possibilities are there and now I understand what my job is and it's in front of me and it's exciting."

On what excites him most about this opportunity at WKU:
"I'm still doing a lot of research and, number one, talking with the players and, number two, figuring out what I have. But the excitement is this: you're at a great school in a great location. The facilities are very good. Obviously, the conference, baseball-wise, is good. For me, excitement wise, is the culmination of a million things. With the kids I have here, I'm excited with them and for them because they're going to be the first ones that are going to lay the foundation. I can't worry about the past, that's not me. I can't worry about last year, but the fact of it being is this is year one, this next year. That's all we're going to worry about. If you've noticed, I haven't thrown out wins or what we're going to do or championships. I'm not that dumb at the beginning here to lay that out right now. But what I'm saying is I also know what can be in the future and that's why I'm here. Right now, we're worrying about me getting in contact with all these guys and these guys wanting to be part of this fall and where things are going to be different and better. I think you roll out of bed one of two ways: you're positive or you're not. If anybody usually gets a text from me, most of the time it will see my name and who I am under it and after that it'll say 'attitude is everything'. That's what I do. The positivity of everything and the positivity of these kids coming back is 'hey, we get to do something about it' … The thing is, you have that choice to roll out of bed and the positivity of 'we get to do something about it' and 'we get to be that team that gets to do it' and that's where you lay your claim what you're going to be part of and that's what's exciting."

WKU Baseball Head Coach Marc Rardin Introductory Press Conference

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