For new Head Coach Andy Stankiewicz, baseball is life

USC baseball Head Coach Andy Stankiewicz sits in his office, which overlooks Dedeaux Field, and begins to chuckle. Scouting reports neatly lay neatly across his desk as he prepares for a trio of weekend games. 

But it’s not the pages of statistics Stankiewicz is laughing at. He’s laughing because he can’t really say what his life is like outside of baseball, other than losing to his brother in the occasional round of golf.

“I’m not sure I got too many hobbies outside of this. Probably not a good thing,” Stankiewicz said in an interview with the Daily Trojan. “My life is centered around these young men and this baseball program. And being as good as we can be as quickly as we possibly can be … My hobby is USC baseball.”

Not only is his life centered around baseball, but the rest of the Stankiewicz family is tied to the sport. His eldest son, Drew, is trying to make it to the major leagues. He just signed with a baseball team in Mexico after toiling in the minor leagues for eight seasons. One of his daughters, Marisa, played college softball at Arizona State and his other daughter, Mia, currently plays at California State University, Northridge. His younger son, Dane, is a volunteer assistant coach at UC San Diego. Father will meet son on April 25 when the Trojans take on UCSD as part of USC’s non-conference schedule.

“That’ll be a fun one,” Stankiewicz said. “We’ll be able to toe it up against each other here this year.”

Stankiewicz has brought the love for baseball he shares with his kids to USC.

Stankiewicz has focused intensely on baseball for many years, coaching at Grand Canyon University for 11 years and playing for seven years in the major leagues. During his time at GCU, he won four Western Athletic Conference Coach of the Year awards — one of only two coaches ever to win four or more in the award’s history. 

He left the program at an all-time high, leading them to their first NCAA Division I postseason appearance in 2021 and their first at-large bid in the following postseason. But Stankiewicz is now the head coach of a historic USC program that has won 12 national championships, the most of any NCAA program.

“To me, [USC] is one of, if not the, historically, most prestigious collegiate baseball programs in the country,” Stankiewicz said. “And I grew up here in Southern Cal, not too far from campus here. And so I’ve just always believed in the school and believed in this baseball program.”

But USC has not had that prestige as of late, sporting losing records in each of the last five full seasons. Enter Stankiewicz.

“[I] certainly knew we got some big challenges in front of us,” Stankiewicz said. “But I just wanted to be a part of helping USC baseball get back to where I think and I believe we need to be.”

When he took over a team that most recently finished dead last in the Pac-12, Stankiewicz knew he would need to bring in the right pieces to make this season a success. One of those pieces came in the form of Trojan legend Seth Etherton, a player on the last USC championship squad in 1998 and now the pitching coach.

“During the interview process, that’s what Coach Stankiewicz talked about, was being able to develop these young men and rebuild this program to what we all know it is in terms of legacy and traditions,” Etherton said. “And it was coming back home … Everything just lined up really well.”

Stankiewicz had the buy-in from a former national champion because Etherton saw the newly crowned head coach’s dedication to this job.

“He cares tremendously about the success of this program,” Etherton said. “The ability for him to come back home, number one, and to run a program like USC: I don’t see another candidate that could do that like Andy Stankiewicz.”

But caring and dedication alone from a coach does not win a championship. Stankiewicz had to convince his players that he could develop them into title contenders.

One piece of advice Stankiewicz often tells his players is to envision where they want to go and where they want to be. He often tells his players a story about his times in the minor leagues when he was in the New York Yankees organization.

“He could be on a back field in spring training and he would visualize that he was taking ground balls in Yankee Stadium,” said senior catcher Connor Clift. “You can kind of play those sounds in your head so that when he did get to Yankee Stadium — and he was playing for the Yankees and he did across seven years, eight years — that when he got there, he was like, I’ve done it for six years.”

Clift added that Stankiewicz’s proficiency at the little things, like envisioning his success and preparing for the bright lights, is a large reason why he has had such a successful baseball career.

Preparing his players for the major leagues is only one of Stankiewicz’s goals at USC. He also wants to get USC back to championships, back to Charles Schwab Field in Omaha.

Though at home at Dedeaux, USC has a history at Schwab.

“If you look at our outfield wall, there’s only one thing out there,” Clift said. “You go to a lot of schools, it says ‘Regional Appearances: 17,’ ‘Super Regional Appearances: four,’ ‘College World Series Appearances: one.’ There’s only national championships on our outfield wall. That’s it.”

Coach Stankiewicz only has to swivel the chair in his office to see that outfield wall which lists the 21 Trojan CWS appearances and 12 national championships.

“I know that’s his expectation, that’s his standard and I know that’s what is asked of him by the University,” Clift said.

Stankiewicz is not one to shy away from those standards just because it is his first year at USC. His teams at GCU had a history of tough non-conference opponents, including playing and beating No. 4 Texas Tech, No. 7 Stanford and No. 5 Oregon State in his last season with the Lopes.

That tradition of playing tough non-conference teams continued early into his USC tenure, as his Trojans played No. 17 Auburn earlier this season.

“That’s who we’re going to play in the postseason,” Stankiewicz said. “And that was the philosophy there and it’ll continue to be the philosophy here. We’re going to get better quicker. And even if it means taking some lumps early … The more that we can push ourselves and challenge ourselves out of conference, I think it’s going to make us more prepared for the stretch at the end.”

Stankiewicz knows it will take time to get the Trojans to Omaha and the College World Series, but is prepared to put in that work.

“It’s going to take commitment and discipline to each other,” Stankiewicz said. “It’s going to take consistent play, consistent coaching every day. Showing up, going to work, put your hard hat on and work, and work, and work and believe in ourselves. And if we do that on a consistent basis and we grow and we get better, I will feel like it was a successful season.”

Stankiewicz was able to envision himself taking ground balls in Yankee Stadium, and he made it to Yankee Stadium. Baseball became his life. Now, he will try and envision his team hoisting a national championship trophy in Omaha and work to make it come true.