Former Webster University associate head baseball coach Zack Getsee has agreed to become the new head baseball coach for Transylvania University in Kentucky.
Getsee was part of the coaching staff for five years – 2015 being his first season in the associate position. During his time, the Gorloks won the St. Louis Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SLIAC) regular season championship five times. They received NCAA playoff berths four times and went to the Division III College World Series three times in 2012, 2013 and 2015.
“Zack is outstanding,” Head Baseball Coach Bill Kurich said. “Zack, in terms of the work ethic, he’s unbelievable. He beats me to the office every day. He leaves after I’m done. He’s a guy that can relate well to the players. He knows the game well.”
Getsee worked with the catchers and hitters – as well as assisting with baserunning. In college, Getsee played catcher at both Southwest Illinois College and Saint Joseph’s College.
Other than his work with catchers, Kurich said Getsee will be missed the most in the recruiting field.
“The biggest thing for me is going to be the recruiting he did. He was a guy who at the drop of a hat could get up and go see a kid play,” Kurich said. “He’s got a great personality to talk with players, talk with coaches and a lot of times that’s how you stumble upon players is just by having a great personality, talking with with this coach and finding out, ‘okay, there’s a kid here and a guy leaving this school’ and you stumble into players that way just by being a personable guy.”
Getsee is the third assistant coach under Kurich that has received a head coaching position after leaving Webster. The most recent was Logan Johnson who was assistant from 2009-2010. Johnson became the head coach at Lindenwood University-Belleville.
Kurich said current Assistant Coach Jake Harper will fill the newly-vacant role. Harper was the team’s primary pitching coach last year. Alex Kazmierski will be added to the coaching staff. Kazmierski played outfield for the Gorloks in 2012 and 2013 where they went to the College World Series both years. Last season, Kazmierski was a graduate assistant coach at William Woods University and went 39-14.
“He’s a guy that knows the program. He’s a guy that’s been out working hard and doing those things,” Kurich said. “He’s in the family. He’s going to come back [to Webster] and step right in and have a little insight as to how we do things, right off the bat.”
In his new position, Getsee will take over a team that went 22-19 in the 2015 season and brings back sophomores Rex Rogers and Blake Hart to their lineup.
Rogers batted .348 with eight stolen bases in 41 games last season. Hart, a catcher, was second on the team in home runs (3) to go along with a .333 batting average.
Getsee said Transylvania University offers him an opportunity to have the best job in the world.
“I think if you talk to [Kurich], Bill would tell you being a head baseball coach is arguably the best job in the whole world. You don’t want to just turn one of those down unless you absolutely have to,” Getsee said. “So [they gave me] the opportunity to do that and I took it.”
Getsee said he has had interviewed for other positions and turned down of another opportunity, but said it is a job he is very proud of and happy to have and turning down the job offer had not crossed his mind.
At Webster, Getsee was heavily involved in recruiting. He believes that Transylvania offers a similar recruiting advantage to Webster.
“I think it’s a great place to recruit to, I really do, much like Webster,” Getsee said. “There’s a great building block for a new coaching staff to start recruiting to here. The stuff that Bill had showed me along my five years at Webster, I think we can bring here and be pretty successful.”
Don’t be surprised to see some similarities between the Gorlok program and the Transylvania team under a new staff, Getsee said.
“I’m going to bring that same mentality we had at Webster. We’re going to expect to be successful on and off the field and that is something that Bill brought to Webster when he got there,” Getsee said. “That change in culture, that change in ideology is something we are going to bring here.”
With that new ideology, Getsee wants to bring the idea of hard work. That is something he wants to reflect from the entire program. Along with that, he hopes to implement smaller ideas like the breakfast club and time management sheets, things that he used at Webster and believes will help win games and build a championship program.
The potential that Getsee brings to the baseball program has excited some around the athletic department as well.
“We are thrilled to welcome Zack to our team,” associate athletic director Keith Cecil at Transylvania University said in an article on the school’s athletic page. “His experience, character, and vision for success will help guide our program to consistently compete for championships.”
After five years of working with Getsee, Kurich said he is losing not only a coach, but a friend.
“As a young head coach you have got to have fire and passion and desire to make your program great and [Getsee] had that as an assistant,” Kurich said. “I was lucky to have him for five years… We’re going to miss him.”
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