Following the departure of former assistant coach Josh Phegley from the Michigan baseball program, coach Tracy Smith and the Wolverines had a sizable hole on the coaching staff that needed to be filled.
Heading into his third year at the helm for Michigan, Smith wanted a coach that he knew would work well alongside him. And he didn’t have to search too hard to find his guy: Ty Neal.
One would be hard-pressed to find a coaching duo more acquainted with each other than Smith and Neal. Their on-again, off-again coaching relationship began nearly 27 years ago in 1997 where Neal was a player under Smith at Miami University. After his playing career was over in 2000, Neal served as a pitching coach under Smith with the RedHawks. For the next four years, Neal bounced around programs before winding up right back at Miami with Smith in 2005.
As Smith took the head coaching job at Indiana in 2006, Neal was right there beside him, serving various roles in the duo’s eight-year career with the Hoosiers. In 2014, Smith took the head coaching job at Arizona State and Neal was named head coach at Cincinnati. But not even a head coaching job could keep the pair apart, as Neal joined Smith at Arizona State for the 2020 season as a quality-control analyst.
Now, for the fifth time and on the fourth team, Neal and Smith are working alongside each other. The two have clearly proven that they can work well together as indicated by the success of their teams, headlined by the 2005 RedHawks squad that made NCAA Regionals and the 2013 Indiana team that reached the College World Series. Now, in Ann Arbor, the duo hopes to bring that same success.
“Ty possesses all the qualities I wanted in a coach,” Smith said in a statement to The Michigan Daily. “He can identify and develop talent. He has a track record of doing this at the Division I level that spans multiple years and programs. At the end of the day, it is that experience and my familiarity with Ty and his abilities as a coach that ultimately led to his arrival in Ann Arbor. Our goal was to fill this position with a coach who didn’t require training wheels in any facet of the job and Ty fit that criteria well.”
Neal brings some pitching expertise along with him as well. Having been a pitcher himself at Miami and serving as a pitching coach several times in his career, he is poised to help the Wolverines’ young bullpen reach their potential.
Clearly, Smith and Neal have an affinity for working together and a track record of success to back it up. Smith has clearly-defined goals of being atop the Big Ten and Neal’s hiring was his first step toward that destination in his third year in Ann Arbor.
The post Ty Neal fills coaching gap, reunites with Tracy Smith appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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