OMAHA, Neb. — Success as a manager has come to Steve Sabins quicker than it did in other baseball endeavors.
As a college player, the Austin, Texas, native played at four colleges. He began at Angelina Community College in 2007 before moving to Daytona Beach Community and then Oklahoma State. Sabins took a medical redshirt with the Cowboys in 2009 and transferred to Embry-Riddle to play two years there. He was the Sun Conference Player of the Year and an NAIA All-American in 2011.
“I was an average player that kind of worked my way through this whole thing,” he said.
Out of college, he managed a team to a regular-season and postseason title in the Futures Wooden Bat League, and in 2012, he was back in Stillwater as a graduate assistant at Oklahoma State. He was the player development coordinator in 2014 and a volunteer assistant in 2015 and had a lengthy resume by the time the Mountaineers hired him as a full-time assistant coach in 2016. Randy Mazey made Sabins the recruiting coordinator two years later and the associate head coach four years after that.
“I was the guy doing film review. I was the guy setting up cameras. I was the guy watching,” he said. “I got an opportunity when I was 27 to be a recruiting coordinator with no experience, and I sucked and I messed up. I recruited the wrong players and I recruited good players, and I saw what transferred and what didn’t, probably through a whole bunch of failure and some success. And then along the way, you start having a really good eye for some of the things that correlate to success at this level.”
The Mountaineers anointed Sabins the head coach-in-waiting in the summer of 2023 and let him take the reins from Mazey when the team bowed out in the Chapel Hill Super Regional in 2024. Today, he was named the national coach of the Year by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association, and he leads WVU into the program’s first Men’s College World Series appearance with a 2 p.m. start today against Troy.
“Obviously, just incredibly humbled to be here,” Sabins said. “Really, really thankful for the opportunity. There are so many deserving people, and the ball has to fly your way, and it certainly did in this scenario for this award. I’m just thankful to be on the ballot, thankful to the group of people voting for believing this program could have a coach and representation like this. Obviously, this is a team aware. You don’t gt an award like this unless your team has success and your assistants are working harder than everyone in the country and your players believe in everything you’re doing.”
Sabins is 89-31 in his two seasons in charge. The Mountaineers won the Big 12’s regular-season title last season, swept the Clemson Regional and set a school record with 44 wins. This team is in Omaha for the first time in 135 seasons and set the school record with 45 wins. WVU and fellow MCWS participant North Carolina are the only teams in the country to play in a Super Regional the past three seasons.
Sabins, 39, signed an amended contract in July that’s worth $3.675 million through the 2031 season. The coach of the year award triggers a $50,000 contract incentive. Since the end of the regular season, Sabins has earned $215,000 in bonuses for this, for playing in the MCWS, a Super Regional, a regional and the Big 12 Tournament and for being a regional host.
“I don’t know if you can ever say you paid your dues because there’s a lot of things that have to go your way and a lot of blessings that have to shake out for you to end up here,” Sabins said. “There are great teams, and there are incredible coaches and seasons that have been put together at the highest level where people don’t end up sitting in this chair right now. So, I’ve been really lucky that there have been some kids in this region that we were able to identify early on that did some special things.”
