Paul Mainieri shares what his 3 goals are for his tenure at South Carolina

During his time at LSU, Paul Mainieri made six trips to Columbia, South Carolina. He coached against the Gamecocks one series at Sarge Frye Field and the rest at Founders Park.

In that span, Mainieri went 6-8 against South Carolina with two series wins. But that’s not what he recalls about those trips. It’s something entirely different.

“I don’t remember there being an empty seat in the stadium,” Mainieri told GamecockCentral. “Every time we came here, it was a sea of red. The crowd was into the game. I mean, they weren’t vicious or anything like that. It was intimidating.”

Over the last few years, especially this past season, it wasn’t like that. Mainieri hasn’t coached against South Carolina since 2021. But there were a lot more empty seats at Founders Park in 2024.

Recognizing that, Mainieri has a few goals for his tenure as the new head coach at South Carolina. The first one is a little bit abstract as he put it.

“I want to bring back that energy if it has been missing a little bit,” he said. “But I want to bring back that energy and enthusiasm that surrounds Carolina baseball.”

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How will he go about doing that? Winning will mostly take care of bringing fans back to the stadium but there’s always more to it.

“This is not a knock on the previous staff or players, I don’t know what existed. I only know what I think brings people out,” Mainieri said. “When I was in Baton Rouge, I got hundreds of invitations to go speak to groups. And I usually did it and it was a lot of effort. It was a lot of extra work. But I think the people would appreciate when you’re out there and say, ‘Coach, we’re going to go support the program because this coach is making an effort to be out there and be with people.'”

At the same time, Mainieri doesn’t want to be the only one putting in an effort to be involved in the community. He said the players also have the same responsibility as him. And he expects them to do so.

“Sometimes college kids, when they have free time, they just want to lay in bed, watch TV or play video games. But I want to see our players go out there in the public as well,” Mainieri said. “I really believe that the people of Columbia get to know our players, they’ll want to support them because they really are great kids.”

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Mainieri’s second goal is to impact young people’s lives. It’s why he got into coaching in the first place.

When Mainieri originally thought about becoming a baseball coach, he had a conversation with his father, who is arguably the greatest JUCO coach of all time.

“He says don’t do it for money. Don’t do it for prestige. You can’t eat prestige, it doesn’t matter. Don’t do it because of ego popularity. He said don’t even do it because you love athletics or love baseball, or you love winning. He said there’s only one reason to go into it. And that is to have a positive impact on young people’s lives. And so that was pounded into my head,” said Mainieri, who was only 14 years old when he talked with his father about this.

The last objective is pretty simple and perhaps the most obvious. Omaha. That’s why he ultimately came to South Carolina. He wouldn’t have come out of retirement if he didn’t think it was possible. But that’s why he’s here.

But it might be the hardest goal to reach. While Mainieri has made it to the College World Series multiple times, he hasn’t always come away victorious.

“The brain made it look easy there for a while, but it’s really hard to make it to Omaha. I took six teams there, so we won six Super Regionals. But I also lost four Super Regionals,” he said. “You’re a game away from getting to Omaha — it’s a bitter loss when you don’t get there. And when you get there, to Omaha, but you don’t leave with the big trophy that’s bitter to death. That happened to me five times. So people have to understand it’s really hard. But it’s really doable too. And Ray proved that. So I don’t want to say we’re going to do it or I’m going to die trying. But believe me, the effort is going to be there.”

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