Baseball's Jancuska first active UMBC coach to be inducted into Hall of Fame

Every morning when UMBC baseball coach John Jancuska gets up, he says he thanks God for having the opportunity to coach baseball for a living.

He was a two-year starter for the University of Delaware. By the time he was 23, he was the head coach of a Division II baseball team. He's spent his life playing or coaching baseball.

"I've never worked," Jancuska said with a smile.

Thirty-three years and a change to Division I later and Jancuska is still at UMBC, boasting more than 600 wins and a handful of NCAA Tournament appearances on his resume: plenty enough to earn the coach a ticket into the UMBC Athletics Hall of Fame.

Jancuska, who became a Retriever in 1977, will become the first active coach to be inducted into the Retriever Hall of Fame on Feb. 6, said Director of Athletic Communications Steve Levy.

"I'm humbled and I'm appreciative for the recognition," Jancuska said, though he seemed embarrassed to bask in his moment while saying that all he's done is follow his passion.

Bob Mumma, in his 14th season as an assistant baseball coach and a former Retriever baseball player under Jancuska, did the celebrating for his boss.

"He is UMBC baseball. Everything that UMBC baseball represents now," is because of Jancuska, Mumma said.

But Jancuska said he's just doing what he loves, and is grateful he's been able to make a living out of it.

"I loved it from day one," he said. "That's a blessing."

That's not to say the coach hasn't changed over the years, however. Jancuska said in his first decade of coaching at UMBC, he was baseball-only. Fundamentals, technique, pitching rotations and batting lineups were the first things on his mind.

That began to change, however, when baseball alums started to write back to the coach to thank him for the way he ran the program and treated the team. It was then, Jancuska said, that he realized there was more to his job than catch-and-throw.

"The last 20 years of my career, [I felt I was] not successful unless my players had succeeded in all areas," Jancuska said, calling himself an educator. "The most important thing is the feed back I get from my alums, and a lot of the successes that they represent."

The coach said when he started getting the positive feedback from his former players, that's when he knew "I must be doing something right."

Mumma said that having the opportunity to coach alongside Jancuska after playing for him just made him realize how much he thought about his players.

"He always has the best interest of players in mind, no matter what," said Mumma, himself a 1997 inductee into the Hall of Fame.

Having the best interest of the players in mind means wanting them to be happy when they're 30-years-old, not just when they're 18-to-20, Jancuska said, calling development of character and future success the true role of sports.

"It's not a business," Jancuska said. "Especially not at this level."

But though player personal development may now be at the forefront of Jancuska's mind, the coach with a 654-643-6 record aches to get his team back to the winning days it experienced before the Retrievers became part of the America East Conference. In 33 years, Jancuska has had 19 teams with winning records and 19 teams with 20 or more wins.

But since joining the America East in 2004, Jancuska's teams have made only one conference tournament appearance and have yet to earn a winning record -- though Jancuska did win the America East's Coach of the Year award in 2008 after going 20-29 and finishing in third place.

"We've struggled here a little bit," he said. "I'd like to get back to where we were. I'm pretty motivated to get back."

But Jancuska said each year is a new challenge, and he still looks forward to taking it on each day.

"I don't work any harder if we have a really good year [compared to a bad year]," Jancuska said. "I look forward to every year.

"I just want to have a positive impact on the players I coach."