Q&A with new Purdue baseball coach Mark Wasikowski
Mark Wasikowski is already working the phones, calling people associated with the Purdue program to introduce himself and get a feel for the Boilermakers.
The new baseball coach — Purdue made the hire official on Friday, giving Wasikowski a four-year contract (financial terms weren't released) — is looking forward to getting started.
“I really can’t wait to get started to get the baseball program at Purdue University back to the top of the Big Ten Conference and the College World Series,” he said during a teleconference on Friday afternoon.
Wasikowski, a former Oregon assistant, takes over a Purdue team that has struggled of late, with back-to-back last-place Big Ten finishes, but he’s ready for a turn-around.
“There have been some struggles, but those struggles are in the past,” he said. “For me, everybody that is in the program is going to have an opportunity to show how great they want to be. Are they at the level that we can win a national championship immediately or not? That’s to be determined. I’m not sure about that. But I do now this much: We’re going to show up every day, we’re going to get after it. We’re going to play hard and practice probably even harder and we’ll be the best prepared team on the baseball field come game time every game.”
Following is a Q&A with Wasikowski:
Q: What was it about Purdue?
Wasikowski: “I’ve always known the Purdue name. It’s a national name, in the spotlight everywhere you go. It’s recognizable. That jumped out to me. My wife is from the Midwest, she was born and raised in southeast Missouri. … So with a lot of the family connections, the Purdue name, associated with the Power 5 conference. Just the possibility of coming to a program in a Power 5 conference as a head coach with all those factors for me was reason it really piqued my interest.”
Q. You’ve coached on the West Coast and in the Southeast. Did location matter to you when looking for advancement?
Wasikowski: “No, not in the least bit. For me, I’ve coached in the Southeastern part of the United States at the University of Florida, I’ve coached in the middle part with a couple different jobs there. I’ve coached on the West Coach, played in the West Coast, played all over the country. I’ve been flexible my whole career. I’ve been blessed to be able to meet so many different people. So, as far as I’m concerned, yeah, I spent a lot of time on the West Coast, but I recruited nationally for years. And I’ve developed contacts so that, especially in this day and age with social media and the ability to reach out to people, it’s really made the country small. There was no factor on proximity to location to any place in the United State where I’d work.”
Q. Before you accepted the job, did you have a certain level of commitment that you wanted to see from Purdue? Presumably, you saw what you wanted by accepting the job. What sort of things were you looking for that told you it was a program that was committed to getting back to the top of the Big Ten?
Wasikowski: “Well, I thought it was kind of humorous to be honest with you, because when I first learned of the position, all I had heard was how Purdue wasn’t going to be resourced at a high level and all these negative things about this and that. I didn’t find any of it to be true. I didn’t find a single thing. As a matter of fact, I found everything that I heard on a negative basis to be way off base. From my first visits with the administration over the telephone all the way through I didn’t have to put any demands out there or anything like that with the administration. This is an administration that is motivated to get this program back at the top of the Big Ten, they came loud and clear with that with me. I didn’t have anything that I could think of whatsoever that Mr. (Ed) Howat and Mr. (Morgan) Burke didn’t attack right away and address and say ‘Look, we’re going to get this program back to the top of the Big Ten Conference, this is what we want to do and how we want to do it.’ I was extremely impressed.
"The people that I met when I was out looking at the opportunity, I told my wife, were just amazing. From a resource commitment, or any, I’ve been blessed at the University of Oregon, where there’s resources and commitments, University of Arizona, where Jim Livengood was there and then he handed the keys over to Greg Byrne, tremendously resourced. And Purdue is the same, so for me, everything that I’ve been blessed to be, I guess you could say, used to, that’s been echoed here at Purdue. I couldn’t be more appreciative of the administration’s support.”
Q. Purdue had never before given a non-revenue sport coach a multi-year contract. Was the four-year contract important to see that Purdue was making that kind of commitment?
Wasikowski: “Well, how important things were, I don’t think there’s one specific thing that is important in talking about multiyear deals. All I can tell you is that when you talk to an administration about an opening or something like that, you get a real sense right away, whether it’s a multiyear deal, that just scratches the tip of the iceberg. The other things this administration talked about was passion. They want to get back to the top of the Big Ten, they made that as clear as day. There was no question about that whatsoever through the process, so does it show commitment? Absolutely it does. There are programs out there right now — college baseball is really going through the roof in terms of popularity and exposure and all those great things — and Purdue is right there. There’s no reason in the world, and I told my wife while I was out on the visit out here, when I was going through this process, there’s no reason why Purdue can’t be in Omaha, Neb., competing for a national championship.”
Q. What are the steps that need to be taken to get back? Because it wasn’t long ago that Purdue was on the edge of Omaha.
Wasikowski: “And the funny thing is that they didn’t have the facility built. It wasn’t in existence in 2012 when this thing was at the top of the conference and hosting a regional. The irony is that in facilities, there has been a huge commitment. And it’s not just facilities, but the people, the effort, and the facilities are clearly going to help. But for me, it’s a national name first off. It’s not just the first or second year of a program, and boy we’re going to have to kick things off. The bottom line is the things you need to be successful: The culture, we need to create a great culture. We need to recruit great players. We need to have a family of together where everybody in the organization understands that their role is going to help us or hurt us if it was a negative deal, but ultimately creating the culture where every single individual is going to help toward the common goal and that is to get to Omaha.”
Q. How would you describe your recruiting style?
Wasikowski: “Aggressive. I want to be at the field every single day. I don’t want anybody to be able to outwork us. The bottom line is that we’re allowed three people to be out on the road recruiting and as I get the opportunity to hire my staff, that’s going to be a big player. I want people to know that Purdue is out at the field more than any other school, and that’s a challenge because there are a lot of folks working in college baseball these days, a lot of folks. The way you get a good reputation as a place that can recruit is by being diligent, by being on the phone on a daily basis, by following up when you’re supposed to follow up and connecting with the coaches of those individuals, whether it’s the high school coaches, travel ball coaches, professional scouts, a lot of people. It’s a huge circle.
"With technology these days you can really cast that web out really big to connect with people and have it happen really quickly. I think a lot of the folks out there who may not have quite as much success recruiting, it’s an up-and-down type of thing. It’s an inconsistent method of communication with all the key people. So for me and my staff, we’re going to take a lot of pride in being at the field every single day, to where moms and dads, we talk to them and identify them on a first-name basis and greet them the way they should be greeted. And to where those kids don’t just get a phone call from us once in a while but get a phone call from us as much as the rules allow. And touch base as much as we’re allowed within the guidelines of the NCAA, to where they really have a feeling of more than just an opportunity at a university but a connection on a personal level."
Q. You mentioned your staff, what are some of your priorities in assembling that staff?
Wasikowski: “Well, Wally Crancer, who was on the previous staff, will be on the staff. He’s on the staff right now as we speak. One of the other assistant coaching positions that I’m going to hire is pitching/recruiting. Wally’s position is more of a position player/recruiting position. We’ll also hire a volunteer coach who will be an outstanding coach, not just somebody who shows up on a random basis. It’s going to be filled by someone who has goals and objective to be a head coach at a Division I institute just like I’m getting the opportunity to today. So it’s going to be somebody who has the same goals and visions. It’s going to be someone extremely motivated and have a huge role in the success of the program.”
Q. What are the first priorities?
Wasikowski: “The first thing that I’m doing right now is touching base with the key people around the program, and that’s obviously going to take time, because there are a lot of key people. But that’s got to get done very quickly because I want to get on the road, like I said, with recruiting. I think the key in recruiting these days is to have the people out, specifically the head coach. My mindset is going in to this thing whoever head coach is working and out (recruiting) the most, that’s the guy I want to see if I can beat in terms of being out more and outworking those people. So setting that standard is going to happen early. And it’s going to be probably a heavy, heavy dose of recruiting for the first … well, until school starts, I can tell you that much.”
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