MAAC Coaching Spotlight – Marist’s Joe Ausanio
Edison, N.J. (July 13, 2020) – Marist College Softball Head Coach Joe Ausanio sat down with the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) to provide insights on the Marist program, the cancelled season, and his Major League Baseball playing career. Ausanio is a three-time MAAC Coach of the Year (2011, 2016, 2019) and is the winningest and longest tenured coach in program history. He has guided the Red Foxes to MAAC Championships in 2013 and 2016.
Q: A former baseball stand-out, what was the reason for you originally getting into coaching softball?
A: Honestly, it kind of happened by accident. I met somebody and they knew me as a former baseball player. He asked if I ever considered umpiring. I figured that wasn’t for me because I gave a lot of kids pitching lessons and I didn’t want that to be a conflict, but he said he was talking about softball. I thought, softball? Why would I want to umpire softball? So, I kind of got into softball through the back end of things as an umpire, I umpired for about four or five years. I was doing high school games and regionals, so I got to learn about the game more from a different perspective. As a baseball player watching how the game is played and asking myself, you know, why are things done this way? I think I have a better way to do that. I was always very friendly with the Marist Athletics staff because the minor league baseball team I work for used to host the MAAC Baseball Championship every year at Dutchess Stadium. One day Tim Murray came up to me and said he hired a new softball coach and that he wanted me to work with her. I did that for a year as an assistant coach, but the timing wasn’t good for me so I ended up going back to working full time for the Hudson Valley Renegades. I got a call in August of 2008 and it was Tim Murray. He informed me that his head softball coach just took a new job, he asked me if I could get him through the fall season. I’ve been there ever since.
Q: What are some of your favorite moments from your playing days in the MLB?
A: There are so many great memories I have. Getting to play for the most historic franchise in history, the New York Yankees, was incredible in and of itself. I think for me, I was fortunate because I’m a New Yorker and grew up so close to Yankee Stadium in Kingston, New York only 90 miles away. I began my career on the road, I was called up during the All-Star break in 1994. The very first trip for the Yankees was the West Coast swing, so 10 days on the road out west. I had a little bit of time to process everything and get my feet wet before I was besieged by everybody when I got home. Just that first game in Seattle though, pitching against Ken Griffey Jr., was a pretty surreal moment. Then getting my first Major League strikeout against Alex Rodriguez was pretty cool. My second appearance in Seattle, the second game I played in, I got my first Major League win, so it’s hard to top that because it’s something you work for your whole life. That last out was a ground ball back to me and I tossed it over to [Don] Mattingly. He threw it back to me and told me congratulations. It was pretty cool. Coming home, my first game at Yankee Stadium was against the Boston Red Sox, and I got in that game. That video is actually on
YouTube, I pitched an inning against them, so that is pretty cool as well.
Q: Were there any teammates in the big leagues that you were particularly close to?
A: I’m still close with a lot of the guys. I’m still close with Mariano Rivera, Brian Boehringer is a good friend of mine, Jimmy Leyritz, those are the ones I would say I stay in touch with the most.
Q: Are there any major lessons your brought back from your major league career that you use to teach student-athletes now?
A: Oh, no question. I was fortunate to have some of the best teachers in the world teach me. Just little things, like how to execute run downs correctly, how to run bases correctly, how to be aggressive both at the plate and on the bases. Having been in film sessions daily, going over scouting reports with the Yankees, now being able to show kids on video what we are looking for and how we can better our team and improve on those little things that could result in a win. When I first got into professional baseball, I was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates, and I was in their organization for five years. One of the things that I took with me from the Pirates that I instill into our team is that the whole Pittsburgh Pirates defensive schemes were to combat the St. Louis Cardinals and their team’s speed. I just remember how much of a fit it used to give me as a pitcher, knowing the other team was running and that I could make a good pitch and the position players may be out of position. So, I really like to do that and play that type of game with our kids, just because it puts a lot of extra pressure on other teams. It has translated into a lot of wins for us, especially in conference.
Q: How do you like to construct your team? Do you put an emphasis on hitting, fielding, or pitching?
A: It is one hundred percent about our pitching (laughing). I just believe that if you are good on the mound, you recruit good athletes, you can be successful. Right now, I’m very excited about our pitching staff. We have some very young arms and a senior this year, but we have three arms that will be with us for another three years and that is just incredible for us. We have a senior pitcher who serves as a leader for us who has pitched a lot of big games, especially in the MAAC Championships, I’m just excited about our pitching. My job is to try to fill the holes with the rest of team. We have a very good team, a lot of team speed. My thought process is that speed will never take a day off. We can always put pressure on teams by running and making things happen. The big bombers will strike out, but those faster players are hard to get out sometimes.
Q: What attributes do you look for in a recruit?
A: The very first thing I look for, and this is not cliché at all, is academics. Marist is a very good academic school and I want to make sure kids will be successful not only on the field, but especially in the classroom. So that is the very first thing I look at when a recruit is either emailing me or showing interest in our program. The second thing is athleticism, I look for kids who can play multiple positions. I really try hard not to pigeon-hole myself into recruiting someone who only plays first base, only catches, only plays third base, you know. I don’t want somebody who has only ever played one position their entire life. I want somebody who has played shortstop, second base, outfield, maybe even caught and pitched a little bit. I just think the more versatility you have on your team, the more you can do. It also gives those kids a better opportunity to play.
Q: What were your expectations this year? What did the beginning of the season tell you about your team?
A: Our expectations were to win the conference. We felt like we had a team that could do that. Monmouth has been on top of the pile for the last couple of years, and the target is on their back. I always remember saying it’s harder to repeat as a champion than it is to get there, because there is a lot of extra pressure and you are expected to win. Sometimes, the underdog role is the easier way to get in there. What I’m happy about though is that our conference has so much parity, a lot of times you have a ton of teams fighting for the last spots in the championship. This upcoming year with the MAAC moving to only four teams, it will be even tougher to make the MAAC Championship and it will make us really put an emphasis on all of the small things to get us back into the postseason.
Q: What was your initial reaction to the cancellation of the season?
A: Disappointment first and foremost from me. Not so much for me, but for the kids, because they put so much hard work and dedication into everything. We were 19 games into our season and usually we never had a winning record going into spring break, but we were 10-9 and had played three top-25 teams. I was pretty pleased with the position we were in. We had another top-25 team to play over spring break and a couple of teams that were really good coming up, all to prepare us for conference play. The day we were going to leave for spring break, I remember it was a Thursday, Tim Murray our Athletic Director called me and said he was thinking of calling us back, that he was uncomfortable with us flying and didn’t want us to get stuck in Florida. It tuned out he made the right call, because after that things just kind of snowballed with the pandemic. I think our baseball team was already at the gate at Kennedy when he called them. It was frustrating, but I understood it was bigger than us, bigger than athletics, bigger than sports in general. We are talking life or death for a lot of people. It was just an unfortunate situation and I hope we can get back to school this fall.
Q: How was this news broken to student-athletes, and what was their reaction?
A: Once we got called off for leaving, I had an emergency team meeting. We gathered the kids and broke the news to them. There was a lot of tears, a lot of frustration and some anger because they couldn’t comprehend it. I was crying myself. I felt bad for them, I felt bad for my assistant coach Morgan, I wanted to express to them that all of their hard work was not for nothing. We put ourselves in a great spot heading into spring break and were prepared to have a great season, I felt like we were in a good spot. It was hard, probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, breaking that news to them.
Q: What have you personally been doing during the pandemic? Do you keep in contact with the team?
A: We would have online meetings with the team. We talked about ideas for fundraising for next year, just in case there are cuts to the budget, you know, we aren’t sure if that is going to happen. I want to give the kids an assemblance to any normal season we would have had, even if it means doing some extra work. Everybody is prepared to do that. I think it was one of those things where we are just trying to move forward now and hope that we are going to have a season next spring. I think that if we are cancelled next spring, it could be a difficult situation for a lot of people.
Q: What is the first thing you are going to do when allowed back on campus?
A: Take the team out for ice cream (laughing). Just kidding. I think I would like to just see the kids in person, not on video, and give them hugs and let them know everything is alright. We learn from this hopefully, it’s just like anything really. You try to make it the best possible situation you can. Even though it was, and still is, a difficult situation, my goal will be to just get everybody back together and have a great practice. One thing about us is that we have a lot of fun at practice, we really try to make it as enjoyable as possible while still getting our work in. One of my goals is, I tell all the kids this, my goal is to make practice the best two hours of your day. If you aren’t looking forward to coming to practice then I’m not doing my job.
About the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference:
With 11 institutions strongly bound by the sound principles of quality and integrity in academics and excellence in athletics, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) celebrates its 40
th year of competition during the 2020-21 academic year. Current conference members include: Canisius College, Fairfield University, Iona College, Manhattan College, Marist College, Monmouth University, Niagara University, Quinnipiac University, Rider University, Saint Peter’s University, and Siena College.