Mark Wasikowski - Head Coach at Oregon Baseball on Teaching Players To Lead, When A Walk-On Called Out The Head Coach, When Oregon Baseball Ditched The Fancy Nike Gear, and More.

Coach Forward is an interview-style podcast hosted by Jason Mejeur (Coach J), accomplished Coach, Mentor, and Founder/CEO at OWN IT.

Highlights from the episode:

[13:41] Leading By Listening
[15:57] Being Question-Oriented vs. Statement-Oriented
[25:07] Creating A Mission-Vision-Process Team
[28:59] Teaching Players To Lead
[34:30] When Oregon Baseball Ditched The Fancy Nike Gear
[37:46] When A Walk-On Called Out The Head Coach
[44:45] Player-Led Culture Sessions

Today I got to talk with Coach Mark Wasikowski, Head Coach of Oregon Baseball.

During his five-year tenure as a head coach, Mark Wasikowski has proven he can turn a program around in a hurry. In his first full season at Oregon, Wasikowski led the Ducks to a 12-win improvement over Oregon’s win total the season before he became UO's head coach.

The Oregon turnaround came on the heels of an even bigger improvement at Purdue, where he was a first-time head coach. The Boilermakers won 19 more games in Wasikowski’s first season at the helm than the team totaled the year before he took over the program.

Wasikowski also coached both teams to postseason appearances after significant playoff droughts at both Purdue and Oregon in year two as head coach. After coaching just 15 games in his first season at the helm of the Ducks because of COVID-19, Wasikowski led Oregon to a 39-win season and a spot as an NCAA Regional host in the 2021 season. The postseason appearance was Oregon’s first since the 2015 season.

At Purdue, Wasikowski led the Boilermakers to a 38-win campaign in 2018 and a spot in the NCAA Regionals two years after PU finished the season 10-44. It was Purdue’s first postseason appearance since 2012 and just its third in school history.

As an assistant or head coach, Wasikowski helped lead 16 of his 24 teams (omitting 2020 COVID-19 shortened season) to the postseason, including three Super Regional appearances and one trip to the CWS. In four stops as an assistant coach, Wasikowski helped each of the four teams advance to the postseason.

In addition to the two regional tournaments he led his teams to as a head coach, Wasikowski helped Oregon to four postseason appearances in his five seasons as an assistant on George Horton’s staff. At Arizona, the Wildcats advanced to the NCAA Tournament seven times in his 10 years on Andy Lopez’s staff in Tucson.

About Jason Mejeur (Coach J)

Jason has 15+ years of experience coaching basketball at the college and high school level and has lived on the sidelines and in the locker rooms working to build teams and inspire athletes.

His mission is to build authentic relationships with his players so that he can impact them beyond the basketball court.

More recently, Jason is building the OWN IT System to help bring data-driven sleep and health coaching to student-athletes and their teams.

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