Why Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick selected new baseball head coach Shawn Stiffler

It’s obvious to anyone who followed the team this spring, and it’s critically important. That’s why Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick opened new head baseball coach Shawn Stiffler’s introductory press conference on Thursday afternoon talking about it. 

“When as an athletic director you’re looking for a new head coach, the quality of the candidate pool is directly proportional to the quality of your program,” Swarbrick said. “We’ve never had an opportunity to have a program in a better position to conduct a search.”

Notre Dame baseball is coming off of its first College World Series appearance since 2002 and boasts a top-five winning percentage nationally over the last three years. That’s a pretty darn good position Swarbrick was in. As such, he could be a bit choosy when selecting former head coach Link Jarrett’s successor, taking his time with the hire and making sure he found someone who embodied Notre Dame. 

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By his account, everything worked out just fine. 

“We were especially impressed by a few characteristics,” Swarbrick said. “One was consistency. As a head coach, (Stiffler) averaged better than 34 wins in his nine full seasons and led one of only seven programs in the country to have that many wins over those seasons. 

“And he was successful in the toughest games and in the environments that matter to a program like this. That was evidenced most recently by wins in the Chapel Hill Regional over Georgia and North Carolina.”

The Rams went 42-20 this past season, and won the first two games they played in the NCAA Tournament — an 8-1 victory over the Bulldogs and a 4-3 defeat of the host Tar Heels. It was VCU’s second consecutive appearance in the tournament.

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The results on the diamond were of course important to Swarbrick, but the additional two reasons for hiring Stiffler have more to do with his character. 

“The respect that he commands among other baseball coaches in the country, including some of the very best,” the Irish athletic director added. “It was informative to us to hear how often those coaches said ‘Shawn’s teams look a lot like Notre Dame’s teams.’ From our perspective, that’s a very high compliment. 

“Then it was the characteristic that meant the most. During our discussions, Shawn talked in terms of family as much as anyone I’ve ever interviewed, both in terms of his dedication to his own family and his relationship with his baseball family. There’s no place in college athletics where the concept of family is more important than this university.”

Stiffler arrives in South Bend with his wife of 14 years, Jen, and their three children: Wade, Scout and Penn. Thanking one’s family is part of every introductory press conference, but anyone sitting in front of Stiffler on Thursday afternoon could tell he really meant it. While holding back tears, Stiffler expressed his gratitude to Jen and his young kids, who sat quietly in the front row of the room inside Notre Dame Stadium. 

“Wade, Scout and Penn, you guys never really get all of your father,” Stiffler said looking in their direction. “Truthfully, when we were making this move, I was most nervous — and Jen was most nervous — to tell the children. We didn’t ask them to uproot their life from their friends. But the second we did, they handled it with so much grace. It was almost like they knew how special of a place this is and what an opportunity it would be for our family to have an impact on a community like this.”

Stiffler, who grew up watching Notre Dame in Western Pennsylvania, even added an anecdote about his children being able to tap the famous “Play Like A Champion Today” sign in the tunnel between the football locker room and the entrance out onto the field at Notre Dame Stadium prior to Thursday’s press conference. The few moments illuminated what Swarbrick had said a minute prior: it’s family first for Stiffler.

Now the 43-year-old will look to blend his family with his new baseball family, a group of around 50 young men who view the 2022 season not as a final destination but as just the beginning. They’ll look to Stiffler as he, too, embarks on his new beginning.