John Cohen is used to addressing a younger crowd.
As the Mississippi State baseball team’s head coach spoke to the Starkville Rotary Club on Monday, he was enthusiastic about his community and his program’s future.
Cohen has come to know the Starkville community well. In his sixth year as the baseball team’s leading man, Cohen, a MSU grad, has built a program that reaches out to its community and is among the most popular college teams in the country.
“When you look at our population base, and you look at the involvement of this community and surrounding communities, it’s astounding,” Cohen said. “I marvel at the passion of our fans and the family atmosphere.”
MSU ranks third nationally in attendance, something Cohen attributes to tradition built over years. Last April, when MSU hosted Ole Miss, the game was played in front of the largest regular season crowd in NCAA baseball history: 15,586.
Cohen has his players interact with the community on a regular basis. They read to children in schools and volunteer in the city. When season tickets come in, Cohen’s players deliver the tickets to fans. Cohen told The Dispatch the teams trip to the College World Series in 2013 was when he realized the dedication of the Bulldog faithful.
“We’re in Omaha and they had the gates locked until two hours before game time,” Cohen recalled. “Watching people, a flood of maroon, sprint to their seats in the outfield was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It was just an incredible experience to see those people rushing to their seats.”
“I’ll never forget visiting with Pat McMahon, who was the coach here in the late ’90s, and I remember saying, ‘Coach, how do we do this? How do we get all these people to show up?’ And he said ‘Well, it’s because we know the people.’ Everybody knows everyone else, so there’s a family attitude, there’s a closeness.”
The coach is optimistic that in the future fans will be able to rush to new seats, in a refinished Dudy Noble Field.
Cohen spent much of his talk focusing on the work that needs to be done to make MSU take the next step in its baseball program: updating facilities. The coach showed slides of the facilities at Texas A&M University, Louisiana State University and other conference rivals. He said MSU needs to upgrade Dudy Noble Field to reflect the program. Those plans are likely to go into action following the 2016 season, though no official price tag and action plan has been set. Many Rotarians voiced support for facility improvements.
“With the facility things, I’ve heard nothing but positive responses from the Mississippi State community,” Cohen said. “I think there will be incredible involvement and opportunity for our fans to get the seating and the area of the facility they want.”
New facilities, Cohen said, will help attract good players, something the program already has had much success with.
“When someone signs up to play baseball at Mississippi State, they know exactly what they’re signed up for, so we’re getting the right kids,” Cohen said.
“It’s an exciting time to be in this program, because so many different things are happening,” Cohen said. “What’s amazing is a lot of folks around the country view the state of Mississippi in a very bad way. They don’t get who we are. But when they get to this campus the first thing they say, they always say the same thing when they step on to this campus: ‘This is not what I thought it was going to be.’ And they fall in love with this place just like I did.”
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