Mik Aoki has been a busy man since being named Notre Dame's baseball coach on July 13. The former Boston College skipper has been back and forth between South Bend and Boston as he prepares to put his old house on the market and move his wife and three young children to northern Indiana.
Aoki has also been working the phones as he contacts both current ND players who are scattered around the country playing in summer leagues as well as calling high school recruits. He is also in the process of hiring his new coaching staff.
Here are six questions with Mik Aoki.
Q: Communication was a subject that came up recently at your introductory press conference. How important do you think that aspect was in your hiring at Notre Dame?
A: I certainly think that was a big part. I think one of the emphasis that (Notre Dame Athletics Director) Jack (Swarbrick) and (Assistant AD) Josh (Berlo) and the people out here was that they wanted to find a person who had a track record of being able to develop players, and player development is a big part of making Notre Dame successful in almost any sport. I don't know that player development happens without good communication, so I certainly think that played a good part in it.
Q: In talking with players who played for both of the last two coaches at Notre Dame (Paul Mainieri and Dave Schrage), it sounded like there was not a lot of player leadership under the previous regime, because it was not fostered by the head coach (Schrage). As a head coach how do you foster player leadership within the team?
A: I think you encourage some of it. I think that one of the things we were able to do pretty successfully at BC was to foster an environment where kids on the team sort of policed themselves. They did a good job of making sure that they were making the right decisions on campus and getting to class. We had an instance where our captain basically gave one of our sophomores a week-long equipment duty, because he had skipped some classes the previous week and he knew it. So, I think you identify certain players that might have that sort of emerging trait as a leader and then I think what you do is give them a little bit of rope and you empower them a little bit, and you encourage that sort of thing so that in each subsequent class those leadership qualities get maybe a little bit more honed and stronger. Ultimately you end-up year-in and year-out where you have some leadership structure in your team that helps you as a coach.
Q: You make a pretty noticeable facility upgrade going from Boston College where the baseball facility doubled as a parking lot during football season, but now you have a permanent facility at Notre Dame that is one of the top three facilities in the Big East. How important was that in your decision making process to take the new job?
A: I don't know that the facility played a huge issue for me in deciding to come here to Notre Dame. I think the biggest factors in me coming out here was that I thought it was a great fit from a personal standpoint and from a professional standpoint. I do think however that, obviously, one of the added benefits is that we do have a baseball only facility, and it's a pretty good facility. I think there are some little tweaks that need to be made to sort of keep up the facility "arms race" that is going on in college baseball, which was kicked-off by coach that was near and dear to this place (current LSU head coach Paul Mainieri). But I don't know that we need something here at Notre Dame that looks like (LSU's new) Alex Box Stadium or the new facility they built in South Carolina, but it certainly plays a factor in the recruiting part of it. In a bigger way I think it reinforces the idea that Notre Dame espouses that they're trying to give the student-athlete the best possible intercollegiate athletic experience that they can possibly give them.
Q: When you talk about recruiting now your recruiting base expands. How does recruiting change for you now, is there a different approach when you are recruiting a bit more nationally now as opposed to regionally?
A: I think our approach doesn't necessarily change all that much. I still think we need to define what we feel our "backyard" is and locking-down our backyard to the extent we can. Then you go outside of that area when you need to or when there's significant interest shown to you by some kids. I think the brand name of Notre Dame helps us, because it generates more interest from outside of the area and maybe it gives us a little more juice initially going into areas that maybe might have been traditionally hard for BC to get into.
Q: The 25-inning game (the longest game in NCAA history, which Boston College lost 3-2 to Texas) is something you've heard about quite a bit in the last year. Former Notre Dame football coach Charlie Weis used to say of the epic 2005 ND-USC football game that he would always just be the losing coach in that game. How do you see your involvement in that game...a year removed from it?
A: I certainly appreciate it more now than a year ago. I think like any coach you're still upset that you lost it, especially when all we needed to do was score one silly run. But it was special from the standpoint of...I think the players that took part in that game that night played at such a high level for such a long period of time. To play at that level, that both Texas and BC played at, for seven hours and for 25 innings is pretty remarkable when you think about it. I think more than anything else that's probably the biggest thing as a coach. My wife kind of gets on me for thinking this way, but I'm still a little chapped that we lost the thing.
Q: What's the most important thing you need to accomplish between now and when the team gets back for fall as well as once they get back on campus?
A: Number one is making sure that I finish contacting all of the players, and having at least one or two conversations with them before they get back. I think once they're back just for them to see that perhaps things are a little bit different and that they're going to be held to a different standard. I can't speak to what the standard was before, but it's going to be the standard that I expect from them. I think the expectations have been raised a little bit. A change of this magnitude is not easy and certainly I know that Jack (Swarbrick) did not take it lightly. It's a pretty significant decision, because you're affecting a lot of lives, but I think he sent a pretty clear message that we expect a heck of a lot more out of the Notre Dame baseball program. I think the other thing is it's late in the summer, but it's important that we bring in a quality recruiting class that three years from now we can look back at and say that was a great first class.
CLICK HERE to listen to a full audio podcast of the interview.
Comments