Racer Baseball success helping coaches in recruiting
Murray State's baseball team made the College World Series last month
Back in June, Murray State’s baseball team put together, arguably, the greatest accomplishment in the history of Murray State Athletics by advancing to the College World Series for the first time in program history.
America loves an underdog and Racer Baseball fit that description perfectly. Throw in some, let’s say, erroneous reporting of Head Coach Dan Skirka cutting the grass at Johnny Reagan Field, and people simply couldn’t get enough Murray State Baseball in the first few weeks of June. According to Meltwater, a cpmpany who tracks media reach, the baseball program had 44.3 billion (with a b) media impressions during the postseason — which includes all impressions through news, print, broadcast and certain social media platforms.
In recruiting, coaches will take advantage of any angle they can use. For Murray State’s basketball coaches, Murray State’s baseball team provided a perfect opportunity to ride the Racer wave into the summer recruiting season.
“I borrowed a baseball jersey from Skirka and the first day out (on the road), I’m sporting Murray State baseball, because that's what everybody knows about,” Murray State Women’s Basketball Coach Rechelle Turner said. "He was gracious enough to give me a jersey, so we're going to utilize it all. What they did was unbelievable and brought so much attention to Murray State. I thought that was kind of cool that I'd ask him to borrow that, and I wore that out the first day. I got lots of compliments and lots of conversation starters with it for sure.”
“No question it does (help), but it may put a little more pressure on me,” Murray State Men’s Basketball Coach Ryan Miller joked last week when speaking to the Murray Rotary Club. “It does help us (with) the visibility of the program. I was in Las Vegas some early last weekend, and people were talking about the baseball team. Any type of visibility for the athletic program we can get — success begets success. If the baseball team is successful, we can feed off that energy and be successful too. What did they do? Let's find out ways how they did it, and we can kind of learn from them a little bit, and hopefully they can learn from us, and we can build championship programs together. That visibility is huge, because in athletics, going to a College World Series and having visibility — it's crazy how many impressions they had on social media. You can't even pay for that marketing. It's impossible for you to pay for that marketing exposure. So that helps out the total athletic program.”
During the year, it’s normal to see Murray State coaches showing support for their colleagues before games and after big wins. If a rising tide lifts all ships, Racer coaches may want to be the tide, but they’re ecstatic when another team within the department gets their chance to shine.
“That's what people don't understand,” Turner said. “Us coaches are every other coach on campus’s biggest fan. We want everybody to win. We want everybody to get the brand out there and and the baseball brand was certainly, certainly there.”