Trev Alberts describes the conversation he had with Texas A&M players before coaching search

The last week has probably been a whirlwind for Texas A&M‘s baseball players. A rollercoaster of emotions that began with being just a few plays away from winning a national championship in Omaha and ended with losing their head coach to an in-state rival after he made it sound like he’d be staying in College Station after the College World Series.

Jim Schlossnagle departing to Texas lead to the Aggies embarking on an unexpected head coaching search, and one that athletic director Trev Alberts wanted Texas A&M’s players to be involved with.

Try Fubo for FREE today and don’t miss any of the action!

“It was a little bit different, there was a lot of emotion in the locker. This is a group that just came off a long season, right? Who came that close to winning it all, and then suddenly find themselves in a position that quite frankly most young people have never been in before,” Alberts explained on Tuesday. “Some of us we’ve been fired, or we’ve changed jobs, it just becomes part of your natural — they hadn’t experienced that. So there was a lot of emotion.”

Negative emotions following Schlossnagle’s departure were followed by positive ones after Alberts decided to make a hire from within. Announcing that former Aggies hitting coach Michael Earley would become the program’s 21st head baseball coach after checking all the boxes in the eyes of the players.

“But ordinarily, what I like to do is walk around and just let them one by one. ‘Hey, if there were a couple attributes that are important to you, and what we look for in the next leader, what are they?'” Alberts would ask the players. “I want to know. And while it wasn’t quite that formal because of the emotion, the consistent theme was is they just want somebody who loves them. They want somebody who pours into them. They want somebody that cares about them more than just as a baseball player.”

“They’ve been great baseball players their whole life, and so it’s really more of the servant leadership piece and that’s what they wanted. And they said, ‘And by the way, there’s this guy named Michael, and that’s who he is to us. He pours into us, We know he loves us and cares about us.'”

After spending five seasons as an assistant coach at Arizona State, Earley joined Texas A&M as a hitting coach in 2022. Playing a crucial role in the offensive development of the program, but more importantly, his investment in the players and the program as he now becomes a head coach for the first time in his career.

“And the fact that he’s developed that relationship with them, then he can coach him hard. It doesn’t matter what sport it is, you can’t coach student athletes hard if you don’t have a relationship with him. So you start with a relationship,” Alberts explaiend. “It just so happened that Michael Earley, and I’m not suggesting there weren’t other coaches who didn’t have relationships, but in large part many or most of the players believed in his ability to connect with the players and how important that was for them.”

From the players to Texas A&M’s top decision-maker in athletics, everyone seems happy with the hiring of Earley. Who will look to continue keeping the Aggies on the course as one of the most successful programs in the country?