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New YSU baseball coach plans to mine local talent
By charles grove
youngstown
Youngstown State publicly announced the hiring of new baseball coach Dan Bertolini, a local product who hopes to rein in local talent.
Bertolini takes over after YSU and former head coach Steve Gillispie mutually parted ways. Gillispie went a combined 61-153 in four years and had one NCAA Tournament appearance in 2014.
The 2004 Poland High School graduate spent the last eight seasons as the head coach of the Mercyhurst North East baseball program. The two-year college hired Bertolini as a 22-year-old and the results were the best of any coach in school history. The Saints averaged more than 29 wins per season during Bertolini’s tenure and won 30 or more games in four of his last five seasons.
What’s more is the players with whom Bertolini did the winning. Mercyhurst North East was stacked with area athletes year after year. Nine area ballplayers were on last year’s roster.
“We loved his successful head coaching experience and his recruiting ability from this area,” YSU athletic director Ron Strollo said. “He spent eight years recruiting not just this area, but Cleveland to Pittsburgh. I thought that was big for our university to get this type of experience.”
Bertolini said even though it’s fairly typical for a head coach to say he plans on recruiting locally, he’s already been there.
“Every coach has probably gotten up here and said, ‘We’re going to recruit locally.’ But when you look at what I’ve done, I’ve done that already,” he said. “We can’t take every player from Youngstown, even though we’d like to. But we won’t want to miss on any guys in our own backyard.”
Bertolini said the only expectations he’s setting for now is that the team is “going to play tremendously hard.” But he also wants his program to encapsulate a blue-collar type of attitude.
“There’s a certain bravado and attitude that Youngstown embodies,” Bertolini said. “When we get between the lines we want to be making Youngstown proud.”
Referencing the team he inherited, Bertolini said he doesn’t believe the team is that far off from competing in the top part of the Horizon League.
“We weren’t far away from a Horizon League championship two years ago and I don’t think we’re too far away from it now,” Bertolini said. “I think it’s definitely realistic we could definitely win games [in the league].”
Despite being just 30, both Bertolini and Strollo believe that will come with plenty of positives.
“Hopefully I wasn’t in [the players’] shoes that long ago so I kind of know their problems, issues and things that are going on and hopefully it helps me connect with them a little bit more,” Bertolini said. “Building relationships with guys on the team and developing a family is really important to me.”
Strollo said the head coaching experience was a bigger deal than hiring what many may feel looks like another ballplayer in the dugout.
“When we looked at him, he’s probably not that far off from when I took over as athletic director or when Jim Tressel took over as head football coach,” Strollo said. “I think it’s more about experience. The fact that we got someone with eight years experience and the knowledge and relationships of this area — we wouldn’t have been able to find that with someone almost twice his age.”
Joking about his youthful appearance, Bertolini said it’s something he’s gotten used to on the ballfield.
“I’m sure umpires are going to go, ‘Hey, where’s the head coach?’ when I come out of the dugout, but I’ve been dealing with that pretty much my whole life,” Bertolini said.