Terry Rooney explains why he decided to leave LSU for new opportunity at South Carolina

Terry Rooney loved being back in Baton Rouge. Just last summer, he and his family moved back to Louisiana as he was beginning his second stint at LSU.

There weren’t many things out there that could tempt him to change the good situation he was in. That is unless his old boss, Paul Mainieri, came calling with an opportunity.

A few days after LSU’s season came to an end in regional play, Rooney got a phone call. It was Mainieri. Almost immediately, this wasn’t just the ordinary run of the mill “Hey, how you doing?” type of conversation. South Carolina athletics director Ray Tanner approached Mainieri about coaching again, which piqued his interest.

“He literally told me about it just a few days ago that it could be a possibility for him,” Rooney told GamecockCentral. “And then once it became a possibility for him, we discussed the details of it and it happened very, very quick.”

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Just when he thought he was going to be able to settle back down in Baton Rouge, Rooney was on the move again. He’s set to join Mainieri’s coaching staff at South Carolina as the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

“As we say with everything in life, it’s about the people. And knowing that it’s about the people, that was certainly a big part of this,” Rooney said. “The opportunity to be the recruiting coordinator again, to be the pitching coach, to stay in the SEC, which as we all know is the best league in the country, it certainly met all the boxes so to speak that if I were to ever leave LSU, this was certainly a place and somebody that I would do it with. I saw the combination of many variables but staying in the SEC, staying at South Carolina with Coach Mainieri, and again with this incredible staff he was in the process of putting together is really exciting and intriguing to me.”

Rooney will join a star-studded staff that also includes the return of Monte Lee and newcomer John Hendry, who has been at Virginia for the last three years. But he’ll reunite with Mainieri, who he has a longstanding history with.

In the mid 2000’s, Rooney was an assistant on Mainieri’s staff at Notre Dame. When Mainieri moved onto LSU in 2007, so did Rooney. They were able to do some great work in two seasons together with the Tigers, as they assembled the top recruiting class in the country that contributed significantly to LSU’s 2009 national championship team.

“I will tell you as I’ve told so many people, I am proud to call Coach Mainieri my mentor. I wouldn’t be where I am without him,” Rooney said. “Many of the opportunities I’ve had and learned so much. And certainly everybody at the University of South Carolina is going to see what I know, if they don’t already, how great he’s going to do for them.”

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The opportunity to come to South Carolina isn’t all about a reunion for him, though. Rooney sees it as the next step in his coaching career. He’s been around a lot of programs, including three separate stints in the SEC over the years. So he knows what he’s getting into when he arrives in Columbia.

“I do certainly look at it as a new challenge,” Rooney said. “I think how you coach players, how you treat them is all the same. It doesn’t matter where you are. I think for me, the biggest thing for players, whether you’re recruiting them or while they’re there, it’s about development and winning. Those are the two things that all the best players in the country want. They want to go to a player where they can develop and a place they’re going to win. And they’re going to do that at South Carolina. Certainly they’ve done it. An incredible tradition, everybody knows that.”

Rooney’s also well aware of the bar that will be set for the program starting next season. The goal has always remained the same: win. And he made it clear he’s going to be all in on getting the job done.

“Like Coach Mainieri said and has said before, it’s all about the players. It’s not about us, it’s about them,” he said. “Every single day I’m going to wake up and do what I can to help South Carolina win a national championship. Like that’s just how I roll. Every morning, the caffeine is going to be rocking, okay? It’s going to be on high octane, and I’m going to wake up every single morning doing what I can in my part to help this program win another national championship.”

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