Podcast: Boston College coach Mike Gambino on recruiting vision

BC coach Mike Gambino joined The Base Path Podcast hosts Dan Guttenplan and Matt Feld. (Getty Images)

The latest guest on The Base Path Podcast is the head coach of one of New England’s top college programs, Boston College head coach Mike Gambino. A BC alumnus, Gambino has led the Eagles through their most successful stretch in program history since his hire in 2010.

In 2016, he led the last New England team to advance to a Super Regional and a top-25 national ranking. In 2021, Sal Frelick became the third BC player to play for Gambino to earn a selection in the first round of the MLB Draft.

Last spring, BC unveiled the Pete Frates Center at Harrington Athletics Village, giving the Eagles one of the country’s top baseball facilities.

“The Pete Frates Center is a complete game-changer,” Gambino said. “The facility and the locker room matches up with any locker room in the country. It has a beautiful players’ lounge for the guys to hang out. We feed them in there, bubble hockey, TVs, team meetings, training room, weight room, and then seven batting tunnels up top that we have the ability to open up and and widen out for whatever we need to get done. So, when you combine the Pete Frates Center, the Harrington Athletics Village, and the bubble that we put over the football stadium, there’s really nothing that we can do as far as helping our guys grow and develop on the field.”

Gambino believes more and more Northeast collegiate programs are offering facilities on par with Power 5 schools in other parts of the country.

“Twenty years ago, nobody really had facilities and resources up here,” Gambino said. “You look at the success that programs have had up here — from Babson and UMass Boston to us and UConn and Northeastern. Across the board, you look at what Scott Loiseau is doing at SNHU. Northeast baseball kids can say in the Northeast and grow and develop. That thing that you have to go down South is not really a thing anymore.”

As Northeast baseball has improved over the last decade, Gambino has expanded his recruiting search all across the nation.

“We’re always recruiting against other ACC schools,” Gambino said. “The model of the kids that we recruit, it’s a kid that wants to play in the big leagues, a kid that wants to go to Omaha, a kid that is tremendously driven on the baseball field but also knows and understands the value of a Boston College degree. I don’t want kids that their degree is their backup plan. I don’t want kids that baseball is their backup plan. We talk about they’re both Plan A at BC.”

Listen to the entire podcast with BC coach Mike Gambino.

The New England Baseball Journal podcast is brought to you by the University of Nebraska High School.

For advertising opportunities, please contact advertising@seamansmedia.com.