Baseball, Men's Sports, Sports

Long Beach State baseball Troy Buckley brought the team back into the national limelight

For Troy Buckley, the last seven years can be gauged in two ways — the personal and then the professional.

When he thinks about the Dirtbags’ success over the past seasons, since he was named head coach the time has gone by slowly – which can be expected as LBSU’s success has varied since he became head coach in 2011 after replacing Mike Weathers.   

“Looking back [over my time as coach] it’s either (there’s two situations),” Buckley said. “When you’ve seen some success happen — it’s gone fast. But, while you’re in the middle of it it’s not gone very fast.”

But, when the 49-year-old remembers his children sitting next to him when he was introduced has coach, times has flown by as he’s seen his children grow up – which was ultimately why Buckley came back to LBSU in 2008.

“The personal side was why I came back,” Buckley said. “I needed to be a father to my own children after those two and a half to three years I was with Pittsburgh.”

After spending time with the Pittsburgh Pirates as the pitching coordinator of their entire minor league system, Buckley, who rejoined as an assistant coach in 2008 as pitching coach under Dave Snow and then Weather when he took over the head coach position.

Weathers has credited Buckley for maintaining the Dirtbags’ success while maintaining the “Dirtbags way” and finding his own method of success.

“It was all his work ethic and getting the right guy,” Weathers said about Buckley’s first coaching stint with LBSU. “I think he really did a good job of recruiting and our success, I think, was really because of his recruiting.”

Buckley mentioned that while his team has had consistent success, the way to stay relevant is to continue to improve.

“The key to having a successful program is to not allow it to go into a lot of valley or peaks either,” Buckley said. “It took us awhile to get on our feet again — both to get competitive and to compete in the national limelight.”

Buckley mentioned that, with the landscape of college recruiting changing, colleges are forced to recruit younger and younger players in order to try to stay in front of the competition.

Former Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and current San Diego Padre pitcher, Jered Weaver, is one recruit that Buckley will always remember.

“His brother went to Fresno State, Jeff,” Buckley said. “And Jeff pitched for the Olympic team in [1996], so they had a little bit of a connection, but Weave was hard, he could have gone anywhere he wanted.”

The difficulty wasn’t only signing Weaver, but the team also had to keep him when Snow, who was really involved in recruiting him, retired.

“We gave Jered one year,” Buckley said. “This what Mike did, he said, ‘Hey, if you don’t like what we’re going to do with you after one year, we’ll give you your release and you can go wherever you want.’”

Weathers also went on to talk about how Buckley has been able to put a winning product on the field when 13 guys were drafted after the 2008 season.

“He had to find his way and I think he’s found it,” Weathers said. “He’s had success here these last three or four years and it shows that he’s really righted the ship and I’m real proud of him.”

When speaking with Snow, the former Dirtbags coach praised Buckley not only as a good coach, but as a person with great character.

“He’s an outstanding person,” Snow said. “He really cares about his players and their development. He always has the players’ best players in mind as part of his coaching philosophy and he’s got good team building skills.”

Buckley is now leading the Dirtbags to a NCAA Regional host opportunity and Big West title.

Now seven years have passed and his children are older, Buckley had no problem jumping at the opportunity to join John Savage, head coach of UCLA and the USA Collegiate Team, and Snow as pitching coach.

“From a personal standpoint it’s a bucket list team for me,” Buckley said. “That’s always been something I’ve look at and said ‘Man, what a fantastic blessing and opportunity, if I had the opportunity to do that.’”

Along with the personal accomplishment of joining the team, Buckley mentioned how historically LBSU has had multiple people associated with the team.

“We’ve had a lot of USA players,” Buckley said. “Secondly, the last three coaches in this program have all been coaches on that team and that means a lot to me.”

Buckley signed a two-year extension before the 2016 season which will expire after the 2018 season. The coach has no hesitation talking about where he sees himself in the future when contracts come up in conversation.

“That kind of stuff is really up to the people above me,” Buckley said. “I certainly want to stay here. I want commitment, I want continuity, I want to end my career here whenever that may be….I want to stay.”

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