Steve Sabins' path to WVU baseball coach took patience, leap of faith

Dominion Post

2 days ago

MORGANTOWN — It wasn't exactly a journey of 1,000 decisions that guided Steve Sabins to West Virginia.
Rest assured, there were plenty of steps the WVU baseball coach took that ultimately brought him to Morgantown.
Others were made for him. There was one instance where he was given the opportunity to back out.
In a sort of leap of faith, Sabins also passed up his first opportunity to become a head coach in 2023 in order to stay with the Mountaineers as a head coach in waiting.
Such is the way of life for any college assistant coach who is looking to become a head coach.
It is a nomad's journey, one where families are uprooted and moved from one side of the country to the other for the next climb up the ladder.
Or maybe it's more like the old TV show 'Quantum Leap,' where Sam Beckett continually traveled through time with the hope the next leap would be the leap home.
Sabins' journey has now taken him to his first NCAA tournament as a head coach in what was his first season since taking over the program for longtime coach Randy Mazey.
The 24th-ranked Mountaineers (41-14) will play Kentucky (29-24) at noon Friday in the opening round of the Clemson, S.C. Regional with either Clemson or USC Upstate waiting on Saturday.
'If you get in the tournament, you've got a shot,' Sabins said. 'That's all you could ever ask for in this world.'
As an example of just how interesting life's twists and turns can be, Sabins' shot nearly came at a number of different schools.
If you reach Sabins' coaching history, it is rather short compared to so many others.
He worked his way up the assistant ranks at Oklahoma State for four years.
'I was a volunteer coach at Oklahoma State, so I was on camp money,' Sabins recalled. 'I was working in the batting cage with seven-year olds trying to pay bills. My wife floated us with a real job.'
He then came to WVU as an assistant under Mazey in 2016.
'Mazey tried to scare me away from not taking the job,' Sabins said. 'He was like, 'It snows here. You and your wife are going to have babies and you're going to be pushing a stroller in the snow.' He tried to scare the hell out of me.'
Turns out pushing a stroller in the snow still beats working with young campers in the batting cage.
'I told him I would take a Big 12 job if it was in Iraq,' Sabins said. 'This was a dream come true for me.'
It could have been so much different.
West Virginia was not the first job Sabins applied for. He admits now that he wasn't even Mazey's first choice as an assistant coach back in 2016.
'I interviewed for a job at Loyola Marymount. I interviewed for a job at Appalachian State,' Sabins said. 'Randy saw something in me, but there was another assistant at the time who turned the job down first. A million things had to happen for the job to fall to me basically.'
It would be easy to say the rest is history, except Sabins could very well have been the head coach at Cincinnati this season rather than at WVU.
The Bearcats gave him his first offer to be a head coach in 2023.
'That was insane,' Sabins said. 'It was the most tight, tense, high-pressured and high-leveraged situation I had ever been in,' Sabins said. 'Ultimately I was extremely thankful for Cincinnati and extremely thankful for West Virginia. Cincinnati was gracious enough to think I could lead their program.
'When you're an assistant coach and you have to provide for your family, the difference between a five-year contract and a one-year contract is very different.'
Mazey had previously expressed an interest in retiring, but there were no guarantees.
'It was a mentally taxing time,' Sabins said.
Mazey and WVU athletic director Wren Baker — 'Within a 24-hour period after the offer from Cincinnati,' Sabins recalled. — put together a plan that Mazey would coach the 2024 season and Sabins would take over the Mountaineers in 2025.
'For me it was great,' Sabins said. 'I tell recruits all the time and talk about delayed gratification. I wanted to be a head coach and make a good salary, but I essentially turned down a head-coaching salary to wait a year to take this one.
'That's a lot of money and a lot of risk and things can change and stuff can happen.'
He felt confident in his decision, Sabins said, because of the nine years he had already spent in Morgantown building and recruiting.
'I loved this place,' Sabins said. 'I recruited the players, and I thought we could win at a high level.'
WVU vs. KENTUCKY
WHEN: Noon, Friday
WHERE: Doug Kingsmore Stadium, Clemson, S.C.
TV: ESPNU (Comcast 266, HD 853; DirecTV 208; DISH 141)
RADIO: 100.9 FM
WEB: dominionpost.com