June 25, 2008
ORLANDO, Fla. (www.ucfathletics.com) - With a drive of over 10 hours behind them, new UCF baseball head coach Terry Rooney and assistant coach Cliff Godwin arrived on campus late Tuesday and have already begun settling in to their positions. Godwin is all set to hit the recruiting trail Thursday, while Rooney is scheduled for a pair of media interviews before he starts his recruiting journey as well.
Rooney will visit WESH-TV Channel 2 and Central Florida News 13 studios Thursday afternoon for a pair of interviews, and also will be a guest on ESPN 1080 with Brady Ackerman and Jerry O'Neill in the afternoon as well. The interview on Channel 2 will be televised Thursday at 6 and 11 p.m., while CFN 13's coverage is set for Friday at 6 and 11 p.m. as well as on their on-demand channel 313 starting Saturday.
Godwin admitted Tuesday was his first time at UCF, and he was quite impressed with what he saw. For both Rooney's and Godwin's thoughts on their first two days in Orlando, as well as an inside look at their upcoming schedules, check out the following Q&A to get know the newest members of the Knights' coaching staff even more.
Q: How was the drive over from Baton Rouge and LSU?
Coach Terry Rooney: It's been a whirlwind the last few days for Cliff and I. Obviously we got back from Omaha as a team late Saturday afternoon and we took the remaining few days to get finalized at LSU. It was a great turn-around. We finished with a great season there and got a chance to talk to everybody on the team and some people in the athletic department. But we are very excited we put some finality to it. It was a great trip over and we are excited to be here. We couldn't get in that car quick enough. It was about a 10 and a half hour trip and Cliff and I followed each other from Baton Rouge to Orlando.
Coach Cliff Godwin: We just packed boxes. Our offices and some clothes are in our cars and that's about it. All of our personal stuff and furniture are still in Baton Rouge.
Q: When do you hope to be completely done with moving?
TR: I'm completely moved from a professional standpoint. My wife is still in Baton Rouge and she will remain there to finish her job until about mid-July or so. Hopefully she will be down here sometime after that and we will begin the house-hunting part of it all.
CG: I'm keeping my fingers crossed because I am supposed to get a fax as I just sold my house. So that's a very good thing. Once that is done, in mid-July I'm going to close on it, pack it up and move on over so personally I will be ready to go. But like Terry said, we are on the job full-swing and we are going to go out and start recruiting tomorrow.
Q: Is it difficult not having a lot of time to settle in?
TR: It's the nature of the beast from a timing standpoint. We both have been to several different schools and have been through this a couple of times. And the transition in college baseball usually happens around this time of the year. Obviously July 1 is an important time of the year because it's the first time you are allowed to have telephone contact with prospective student-athletes. It was very beneficial for us to be out in Omaha to create visibility for the UCF baseball program. That paid a lot of dividends being out there, but at the same time we need to get on the road and be able to evaluate players. Cliff is going to go out there starting tomorrow morning and I will be joining him after that.
Q: In the short time you have been here, what have you been taking care of in order to make the adjustment easier, and when do you hope to round out the coaching staff?
CG: We are trying to get organized and get our offices organized so when you get on the road your stuff is ready for when you come back. And today we spent all day doing human resource stuff, meeting new people and later tonight coach Rooney and I will get our entire recruiting database set in place so we can be ready to rock come July 1.
TR: Recruiting is the lifeline of any college baseball program. That is going to take priority over anything in the coming days and certainly the coming weeks. We actually feel like we have got a pretty good grasp on the state of Florida already from our prior relationships with some of the coaches and scouts. We just need to go out and evaluate them a little bit more in-depth. The biggest part of it is that we get to meet new people, put names to faces and they get to meet us. It's important everyone understands who we are.
Q: Have either of you recently spoken with any past mentors for advice to help you along the way here at UCF?
CG: I think this was a great opportunity for me with Terry and we are pretty good friends so we consulted with each other. We talked to some of our other friends in our profession as well, but for both of us it was pretty much a no-brainer because we were going to be working together and working at a program like UCF. We hope to get this program into uncharted waters so-to-speak.
Q: The UCF campus, fan base and virtually everything about it has been growing enormously the past few years. Compared to schools you have coached at like LSU and Notre Dame where they have long histories, do you think coaching at UCF will be very different for you?
TR: It's somewhat of a different experience but it's an exciting challenge. Any program in college baseball that is consistently at the top, whether it be LSU, Southern Cal, Texas or any of those powers, all of them started somewhere. At LSU, Skip Bertman built that program when he went there. This program here already has a lot of tradition and the foundation is there. UCF has had a lot of success, a lot of championships, a lot of postseason play and a lot of guys on the walls of this Tradition Room that have or are still playing professionally. The foundation is there. What we want to do is make sure we embrace the past. It's very important. And we also have to build upon that. That's what we plan on doing here. As a staff we are not just interested in building a team, we are building a program. The attendance last year and the fans continue to grow and there is great publicity in the program right now. There is a pretty good feeling out there in the baseball community about what's happening with UCF baseball. It may take some time but we are going to get there.
CG: The first time I have been to this campus was when we pulled into the parking lot Tuesday. To be honest, I was just so surprised how everything was new. Terry told me it was a big campus and the newness of the buildings and dorms is a little bit different than the dorms I stayed in at East Carolina. And the facilities themselves are fantastic. The football stadium is only 100 yards away from the baseball field and there's a new basketball arena. I knew these facilities were nice but these are some of the best in the country. I think the commitment to UCF athletics was one of the things that surprised me a little bit.
Q: What would you want UCF baseball fans to know about you, both on the field and off?
CG: For me, I am a worker. No player will ever call me wanting to hit and I will turn them down. We are going to work, do things the right way and play hard. Obviously these things are coach Rooney's beliefs as well. If we lose, it won't be because of effort. That's the number one thing. Personally, I grew up in a coaching background as my father was a high school basketball coach for 30 years in North Carolina. Oh, and I'm single.
TR: It's not just a baseball team on the field, it's what's off the field too. That's just as important to us. We want our guys being out there in the community and we want players to go out there and really be role models. I told some of our players that when I was here for the press conference. I wasn't just sitting on the podium saying things I didn't believe. Everything they are going to here from my mouth will be the truth. And that's something that anybody who knows me will tell you. One of the best pieces of advice I've gotten was from a friend of mine who is actually a head coach at a major university right now and we started working together about 11 years ago. The best advice he told me was that you've got to be yourself. I remembered that when I started coaching. He's gone on to do great things and I've been fortunate to be in the positions I've been in. But a big part of that were people telling me to be yourself. As a team, they are going to take on the personality of the coaches and the entire staff. We are going to have an exciting, energetic staff with guys that the players can relate to. But they also will learn from us on how do the right things.
From a personal standpoint, there will be a lot of caffeine being dragged into this office, let's put it that way.