Newly-hired baseball assistant Joey Holcomb excited to work with Monte Lee
Joey Holcomb couldn’t help but crack a smile when he talked about South Carolina’s offense. He had seen how it good it was before.
“I’m going to be honest with you, they were really good last year,” Holcomb said. “When I think back to the regional, I look at that team that ran out on the field. … There’s some big boys for sure.”
Holcomb was an assistant coach on Campbell’s staff when it faced the Gamecocks in the NCAA Tournament this past season. Now, he’ll get the chance to work with those same hitters that drove in 16 runs in the clinching game of the Columbia Regional.
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South Carolina officially hired Holcomb as an assistant coach on July 1. In years past, college teams were only allowed to have two paid assistants along with a volunteer assistant coach. But that rule changed this year and it marks the first time the Gamecocks will have three paid assistants on staff.
Holcomb will be tasked with helping an offense that had a solid season in 2023. South Carolina slashed .273/.408/.499 with 117 homers and 469 RBI as a team.
He won’t be working alone, though. Monte Lee, who joined South Carolina last season after spending seven years at Clemson, will work alongside him in 2024.
In the days following Holcomb’s hire, the two coaches have already gotten acquainted and hit the road for recruiting.
“He’s down here in Hoover with me right now. And he’s kind of steering the ship to go see this player, go see this game. I’m an extra set of eyes for him there,” Holcomb said.
“And then offensively, him and I are going to be working together on the offense. I’ll be following his lead, same for the position players. It sounds like Monte is pretty active in establishing the practice plan for development of the position players. So I’ll be a part of that as well.”
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Holcomb has been around baseball for a while now. He’s been in charge of developing offenses in the Big South, SoCon and ACC with plenty of success doing it. But that doesn’t mean he’s any less excited to learn from Lee.
“Monte is a coach that’s established. I mean, he’s been successful. He’s known as a great offensive mind and he’s known as a player’s coach. He has a great relationship with his players, coaches all over the country. So I’m excited to see how he works and how he goes about his daily business,” Holcomb said.
In the conversations they have had, Lee and Holcomb seem to be on the same page. For Holcomb, he doesn’t want to change what Lee has taught his hitters. But he does believe he can help communicate some things differently to get a point across to the players better.
“A lot of the things that we say are the same thing. We have the very exact same belief system,” Holcomb said. “Maybe the one thing that I can bring to the table with that is maybe I say it a different way. It’s not always what you say it’s what the person you’re talking to hears.”
