Dozens of former Ohio University athletes will return to Athens this weekend to celebrate homecoming. And then there are those who never left.
For baseball coach Joe Carbone, golf coach Bob Cooley and hockey coach Dan Morris, every day is a homecoming.
All three are Ohio graduates, and though they took different paths to their current positions atop their respective sports, all said they now feel at home.
“Any coach that coaches where they went to college, they’re very fortunate,” Morris said. “When I got the bug after graduating, I didn’t want to give it up.”
Carbone, Cooley and Morris each said their time as a player and the influence of the men they played under solidified their desire to become a coach.
“Even before I got here, I knew I wanted to get into coaching,” Carbone said. “Playing under coach (Bob) Wren enhanced my decision of ‘Yes, this is what I want to do.’ ”
Both Morris and Carbone were lured to Athens by their former coaches.
“Bob Wren convinced me to come to school here. I was from a little town in Pennsylvania, and this was a million miles away from home for me,” Carbone said.
“I remember walking by Bentley Hall for my first class, and I saw the stone that said it seated 1,400. I looked at that and thought, ‘God, you could fit my whole town in there and still have 700 seats.’ ”
Morris and one of his Canadian junior hockey teammates came to Ohio after their coach, an Ohio graduate, tipped off former Ohio coach Craig McCarthy about the pair.
“We both came down here,” Morris said. “He left. I never did.”
Though Carbone and Morris traveled great distances to Athens, Cooley did not.
Cooley was born and raised in Athens and decided to play golf at Ohio after giving up his dream of playing professional baseball.
Now in his 24th season at the helm of Ohio golf, Cooley attributes his coaching career to his former coach.
“Our old coach Kermit Blosser talked to me about helping him with the team,” Cooley said “When he retired, he recommended me for the job.”
Like Cooley, Carbone’s former coach was the one who recommended him for his first job.
Like Cooley, Carbone is entering his 24th season as Ohio’s head coach, but he has coached other teams as well.
After taking an assistant coach job at Marshall immediately after graduation, Carbone had to face his former teammates.
“We played against each other. It was weird,” Carbone said. “My teammates were out there and I was coaching against them. It was weird coaching against Ohio University.”
Morris took the position of assistant coach under McCarthy four years after graduation and said he was fortunate not to have to coach any of his former teammates.
“There’s always a tough transition going from player to coach and especially if you’re coaching players that you played with,” Morris said. “That was something I didn’t want.“
The transition wasn’t always easy for Cooley either.
“As a coach, you don’t get to play a whole lot of golf,” Cooley said. “You always think when your kid hits a bad shot, ‘Why did he do that? I could’ve hit it better than that.’ ”
Both Morris and Carbone began their careers as assistant coaches and now keep their own former players around as assistants.
Pitching coach Andrew See and hitting coach Scott Malinowski both played under Carbone and now serve as his assistants.
The same can be said for Morris, who often keeps former players around to serve as assistants, including recent graduate Steve Osacky.
“I’m real comfortable with those guys because they know what I want to see from the ballplayers and what I like to see on the field,” Carbone said of his assistants. “It’s not something where I have to sit down and tell them what I expect. They already know that.“
Other Oho graduates, including director of football operations Jason Grooms and assistant soccer coach Amy Rossi, serve as assistants at Ohio.
For those who are able to coach at the school they attended, there is a bond that goes beyond the proverbial devotion of a coach and a deeper desire to succeed, Carbone said.
“You have more heart in what’s going on, on your own campus,” Carbone said. “I wanted to give back to Ohio University and Ohio baseball because what it had done for me.”
ro137807@ohiou.edu
