On this week’s episode of the ALL BEEF NO FILLER podcast, we are joined by the Northeast Hawks head coach Marcus Clapp. Coach Clapp talks about starting the program from scratch, his philosophy around the program, and some players to keep an eye on this spring. 

You can read a sample of the interview below or listen to the entire episode on our website, Apple Podcast or Spotify. 

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You said you went to the World Series in year two. What was the biggest jump that you had? Was it recruiting? Did you figure something out? Practice, development-wise? How did you make that huge jump?

Obviously, year one, who am I to turn anybody away? Year one, I was taking anybody and everybody. I didn't know what to expect.I didn't know the type of kids that we were going to get here. Year one was just a mix of a lot of different pieces. We got a couple of transfers in year two.

Drew Smith came over, who ended up being National Player of the Year that year. I think year one, just laying the foundation and laying what our program was about and what I envisioned our program to be and setting the goals. Just getting players to buy in was just a big jump in general in year one because we were full of freshmen, obviously. We didn't have any sophomores or anybody coming back. I think year two, just being that sophomore group, having the guys come back.  

I'll be honest, we just got hot at the right time. We played really good the second half and we lost the first game of the conference tournament and had to win six straight. The talent was there for sure, but we got lucky, caught some breaks, got hot at the right time, and made a pretty good little run. It felt like we were really probably one, maybe two pitchers away from really competing for the National Championship that year.

Our hitters, our lineup, you didn't want to go through our lineup. It was just tough. We just ran out of arms.

Starting a program from scratch, what were some of the biggest lessons you learned or took away that maybe changed over the next few years?

Just the type of kid that we could recruit, I think. 

Like I told you, year one and two, I couldn't really probably go after the kids I wanted to at that point just because who's Northeast? It's hard to explain and tell a kid when the Iowa Westerns and the Hutches and the Johnson Counties are calling a kid and then, oh, here's Northeast Community College. Well, who are you and what have you done? That for me was the hardest part. It was just selling our facilities early and now obviously it's changed in terms of we've had success. We've averaged 35 wins a year. That's even included in our 18-win first-year season. 

We've had a lot of success and I think obviously going to the national tournament, having a couple All-Americans, having the National Player of the Year, we've had a Gold Glove winner. We've kind of done a lot compared to some teams maybe haven't had that in the last 20-25 years. Now our standard's high. Now we expect to win 35 games a year, which is hard in this conference. I mean, I think from top to bottom, this is one of the toughest conferences in the country.

Every conference can say they've got one, two teams at the top every year and I know there's those conferences out there, but I think last year 7 of the 12 teams in this conference were ranked and so it's just a grind. So for us to compete at this level and it just shows that's the type of kid we've got to get in here now. 

We touched on recruiting early on a lot. Recently recruiting has changed a lot from the NCAA Division I level all the way down to the Division III level. Do you attribute some of that early success to just believing in those players? They didn't have anyone that believed in them, but you were able to give them an opportunity and was able to find that it factor that everyone talks about more than the natural skill that everyone is always searching and looking for.

Yeah, and I think that's what we really preach here.

That's kind of our recruiting pitch a little bit is we're here to develop. You're coming here to develop and you're hopefully coming here to play while you're developing. That's our whole spin right there is we want you to get better. We want you to come in and we're going to tweak things. We're going to find what we need to get you to that next level. I ask kids all the time when they're on a recruiting visit, how many Division I offers do you have? Most of them say one to zero and I say exactly. Our job is to develop you so in a year or two that number turns into 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, whatever it is. We really push the development piece here. I think that's also why our roster is small.

This year we started fall with 40 kids. There's a lot of JUCOs out there that are going to have 55, 65 kids. We hope that's a sell to our guys is that our rosters are small because we're going to bring the guys in that we want to help develop but also think can play at this level, that can play right away.

I don't mean any disrespect. I don't need fillers here. I don't need guys just to be here to be here. We only recruit guys that we truly think can come in and compete. We miss on that from time to time. We get the guy that, hey, come walk on and he's a two-year starter for us and he's a stud.

That's our point is come in and we're going to give everybody an opportunity whether you are a scholarship, a walk on, a transfer, a freshman, a sophomore, a redshirt. We're going to play the best nine guys out there that we can. We really just push that development piece and keeping our numbers down in the fall so everyone can develop. If I got 30, 35 pitchers in my opinion, it's hard to put that time into 35 guys that need that individual work and time. That's what we do here. We just keep our numbers down so we have that time to be more one-on-one, more intimate with the guys in terms of development and the time we can put in with them.

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