On Tuesday, WVU baseball coach Randy Mazey announced his intention to step away from that role following the end of the 2024 season. The same day, Mazey joined Tony Caridi on the Mountaineer Insider Podcast to discuss that decision and some of the reasons that led to it.
In a decision that shocked the fanbase, Mazey cited a couple of reasons for stepping away from the program at the age of 57, with one of the main reasons being not wanting to coach his life away and spend time with family.
“This will be my 40th season of college baseball, starting as a player in 1984. And in forty years of doing this, you miss a lot of family time, you miss your children growing up,” Mazey said. “And I didn’t want to be that guy that only lives a couple years after his last game, you know? I want to live my life and spend time with my beautiful wife, Sierra and Weston.”
When talking more about his decision, Mazey feels as though he is making the right one, especially knowing that the program will be in good hands following the end of the 2024 season when associate head coach Steve Sabins takes the reins.
“It wasn’t an easy decision, but the two things that I know as I sit here right now. I know for sure that I acted in the best interest of West Virginia University and this baseball program. I sleep well at night knowing that I’m doing the best thing for the state, the community, and the university. And the second thing I know is that the staff that’s in place with Coach Sabins, Coach Ginther, and [Coach] Garcia are the right people to keep elevating this thing. It has to be the right person here. And you have to know how to do it and those guys have been here long enough that they know how to do it. To hire somebody from the outside who doesn’t know Morgantown and doesn’t know how we play might not have gone well. This transition is going to be really smooth. I didn’t hire Coach Sabins as my successor. Wren Baker did. And Wren Baker has been the best thing to happen to WVU baseball here in the last seven or eight years. He hired Coach Sabins after meeting with him and getting to know him and spend time with him and I think that’s the exact right move because we’ve all seen what a terrible transition can do to a program here recently. And I wanted to make sure that if I did this that the transition was going to be really, really smooth and the program was going to stay at a level to make the people proud of it.”
In his 12 years as the head baseball coach, Mazey has accomplished several thing to be proud of such as building a state of the art stadium, reaching the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1996, developing players into professional level players, capturing a Big 12 regular season title, as well as bringing this program to a level it had never seen before, but he has one more thing he would like to cross off his list.
“I can’t lie, it’d be really cool to go to Omaha in my last year. I pride myself on not being a selfish person, so I never care about how many wins I get. It’s more about the kids and the community and the fans and the state. I want to make them proud. But if I could be selfish for just a second, I would love to take this program to Omaha in my last season. I think that would be a really cool way for me to limp off into the sunset, so to speak.”
