BY: RYAN BASS
Hanging on the wall, wedged between newspaper clippings and a team photo of the 2008 LSU College World Series team, is a blank plaque that symbolizes a goal UCF head baseball coach Terry Rooney has.
It’s a wooden frame that’s etched on the sides and has a gold-plated tag on the bottom of it. On that plate lies what the blood, sweat and hard work will one day finally pay off for Rooney and his baseball program. It reads: “University of Central Florida, College World Series, Omaha, Neb.”
That frame, the initials ORTO and the numerous posters and decorations around Rooney’s office all exude the same message he sends through his team daily: that this program is “on the road to Omaha.”
“This baseball program has taken on the mindset that we aren’t going to back down from anybody,” Rooney said. “We’re not. I talk about Omaha and Omaha is a mindset that you have to believe that you are the best, and you have to believe you can beat the best. I believe that we are the best, and we are not going to back down from anybody in college baseball.”
Rooney, who is entering his second season as the head coach of UCF, has confidence in the 2010 season, coming off a successful campaign his first season in Orlando. Under his guidance, the Knights captured many program firsts, including winning the most games in conference play since joining Conference USA (9), setting four attendance records, recording a program-record 68 home runs, all while capturing the highest team GPA in program history (3.2).
“Last year really was a great year,” he said. “I call it a year of firsts. When people sit back and you just simply look at it statistically, a lot of people won’t say that, but it is true.”
Being a first-time head coach was an adjustment for Rooney, who spent the last 12 seasons as an assistant coach for six different Division-I programs. At LSU he was the pitching coach from 2007-08, and at Notre Dame he held the same position for three seasons prior to his stint with the Tigers. He had to learn how to delegate, something he said he learned from the amount of responsibility he was given from the past head coaches he’s worked with.
“I was fortunate as an assistant coach to work for guys that gave me a lot of responsibility,” said Rooney, who worked under coaching great Paul Mainieri at LSU, among others. “I did the recruiting. I did the scholarships, and I did the pitching, which when you do the pitching itself, it’s like being the head coach of half of the team, so I was fortunate to work for a lot of guys that game me a lot of responsibility.”
Rooney has always been known as one of the top recruiters in college baseball and this offseason was no different. He took on the responsibility of improving his team in the offseason, which included signing the No. 4 recruiting class in the nation, according to Collegiate Baseball. It is a class boasted by four players that were drafted in the 2009 MLB draft, but instead they decided to enroll at UCF.
“As a coaching staff, what we can sell is the tradition of this program in that we have been ranked in the top-10 in the country at one point, but you have a coaching staff that just built a team that went to the College World Series,” Rooney said. “You have a coaching staff that has been there, and you have a coaching staff that has developed players that have reached the major leagues.
Seven of the Knights’ nine potential starters on opening day will have been drafted by Major League teams. Which means there will be a learning curve for not just the players, but for Rooney as well.
“I think, as a head coach, I am going to have to exude a lot of patience,” Rooney said. “This season, as talented as we are, it’s going to take a little while to get the pieces to the puzzle going. I just use that because your experiences are what you are.
“Same thing happened our first year in LSU. We weren’t good, and the second year we brought in the No. 1 recruiting class in the country, and that year we went to Omaha, but we started out terrible … it’s possible something like that can happen here.”
Rooney’s ultimate goal is to take his team to college baseball immortality in Omaha, but the first step is winning the C-USA title. He wants his team to take a page out of the book of last year’s Southern Miss team, who won the conference and got to the College World Series.
“I think we can put ourselves in position to compete for a Conference USA Championship, I really do,” he said. “I think that once you put yourself in position to get to the NCAA postseason, then anything can happen in any given weekend in college baseball, and Southern Miss is proof of that.”
Rooney knows the road to Omaha will be tough, but with solid returning players and a wealth of talent flowing into the program, he feels this year’s team is getting closer to filling that wooden frame.
“You can’t be judged on going to the College World Series,” Rooney said. “There is a heck of a lot that it takes to get there, and there is a lot of luck involved. I am looking forward to this program to continue to climb up the ladder in college baseball, and we have an opportunity to get there, and I think we are close.
“I’ll tell you this, we have 35 guys that believe it, there is no question about that. They hear it everyday from me, and they are going to play with that attitude and swagger.”
