Tanner's replacement confident in future
True, he's been handed the keys to arguably the most successful college baseball program in the past decade, and yes, the cupboard of talent is far from empty. But Holbrook isn't just the new coach. He's the coach that's replacing THE coach.
His new boss, Ray Tanner, just happens to be the most successful coach in not only USC baseball history, but school history. Four national championship appearances, two titles, countless memories. It's a shadow that is impossible to escape.
But Holbrook refuses to be overcome by the shadow. In fact, he embraces it.
"Even though he's our athletics director and not our baseball coach," Holbrook said of Tanner, "his fingerprints are going to be all over this program. This program is still his in so many aspects, and it's going to be a program that he is going to be proud of for a long time."
Tanner officially became the new athletics director at USC on a Friday, July 13, and it was quickly announced that the new head baseball coach would be announced the following Monday, July 16. It was, perhaps, the worst kept secret in Columbia that Holbrook would be the man to take the job.
"It was a whirlwind," Holbrook said of that time. "That weekend was a long one. I couldn't sleep. I just reflected on how fortunate I am to work at a great program, for a great president, at a great university and with great players."
Holbrook is taking over the reins at South Carolina, but he spent the majority of his life at another Carolina, the one in Chapel Hill, where he played from 1990 to 1993 before spending the next fifteen years on the Tar Heels coaching staff. Holbrook said that despite his years with UNC, he never allowed himself to worry about what the future would hold.
"I just thought about working that day," he said. "That's something I learned from my dad [Eddie Holbrook, former head men's basketball coach at Gardner-Webb and Furman]. We all have a dream, but if you consume yourself with that dream, you won't do your current job as well as you could."
Now that he is the head coach, Holbrook will be faced with many new decisions to make. One will be if he will remain in the third base coaching box, where he has been for each of South Carolina's past three runs to Omaha. Holbrook said
he thinks he'll move to the dugout, but that nothing has been decided yet.
"I want [pitching coach Jerry] Myers to knock on the door and tell me he wants me in the dugout," Holbrook said. "That would make my job a lot easier. But Coach Tanner educated me on this, there's too much going on during a course of the game to be coaching third. You have to be extremely cognizant of what's going on during the game, and I'm just not that smart."
Holbrook will be in a unique situation, as this will be the first time since 2010 that the Gamecock team will not be defending a national title. Even though the 2012 season did not end with a dogpile in Omaha, Holbrook refuses to view the year as a disappointment.
"We lost to a great team that was playing at a very high level," Holbrook said of the championship series against Arizona. "As a coach, you take great pride in the fact that your team played as well as they could have."
South Carolina's new coach also said he will not judge seasons by whether the Gamecocks return to Columbia with hardware.
"Our fans may not want to hear it, but our season's success will never be judged by whether we win the national championship," Holbrook said. "There are an awful lot of baseball programs that have won at the highest level that have never won a national championship, much less played for one. We've played for three in three years. We're proud of where our program is."
Along with his former position of associate head coach, Holbrook also served as the team's recruiting coordinator for the past four years. He plans on staying active on the recruiting trail despite his new job. Although the program is currently on an unprecedented run in school history, Holbrook said that this is no time to think that the school will recruit itself.
"If you take that attitude and that approach, you're going to set yourself up for disappointment," Holbrook said. "We have to get out there and recruit as if we're trying to win our first national championship or our first trip to Omaha."
While it may take USC fans some time to get used to seeing No. 2 carrying out the lineup card instead of No. 1, Holbrook hopes that duty will fall to him for many years to come.
"This is a dream job," Holbrook said of his new role of head coach. "I don't want to work anywhere else. I hope this is my last job and I'm going to work as hard as I can every day to ensure that this is my last job."