Ep. 54 | Sean McKinney, Colorado Mesa University

What You'll Learn in This Episode

Host Ross Hawley sits down with Sean McKinney, associate head coach at Colorado Mesa University, one of the steadiest national powers in NCAA Division II baseball. McKinney played for the Mavericks in the mid-2000s, joined the staff right after, and has now been in the program for more than 20 years as head coach Hanks' right-hand man. He coaches the infielders and runs the throwing program.

Recorded in mid-April with the conference race in front of them, the conversation is less about this year's team than about the habits underneath two decades of winning: how a culture gets built and re-built, why Colorado Mesa spends more than 30 minutes a day playing catch, what the transfer portal has and has not changed at the Division II level, and the research he wishes every recruiting family would do before they commit.

The highlights:

• Why culture is always under construction, and what happens when players start policing it themselves
• The Colorado Mesa twist on team jobs: seniors clean the bus, not freshmen
• What he would build first if he were starting a team at any age level
• The support youth coaches and youth players actually need from the adults around them
• A 30-minute daily catch-play routine, from band work and long toss to position-specific throws
• Why the lineup card does not get written until after batting practice
• How a program built on high school recruits approaches the portal era
• Senior-year pressure, the end of a playing career, and the lesson he caught from his dad

Culture Is Always Under Construction

Ross frames Colorado Mesa as the program everyone is trying to reverse-engineer, and McKinney's answer is that there is no bottle to sell. The staff often prefers the word environment to culture, because what they are describing is an everyday act of maintenance rather than a slogan. Coach Hanks started the program down this road more than 25 years ago, the staff has stayed largely intact, and the standards only hold because someone keeps holding them.

That gets hardest in April, when a group has been together since August and correcting small things feels like more trouble than it is worth. Two lines guide the staff: what you permit, you promote, and a second one they repeat constantly.

"You're either coaching it, or you're letting it happen."

The tell that it is working is when the players take it over. Seniors at Colorado Mesa handle the jobs most programs hand to freshmen, including cleaning the bus after a road trip and carrying the balls, because the oldest players are the ones who set the tone. When McKinney overhears an older player at practice or at a restaurant tell a younger one that we do not do that here, he knows the program belongs to them.

If He Were Starting a Team From Scratch

Asked what he would prioritize if he were building a team at any level, McKinney starts with the obvious: you need good players, because the players are the ones who carry the standard. The less obvious part is everyone else. Get the right assistant coaches, because they carry your message through the program, and make sure whoever else is involved, whether that is parents at the little league level or an administrator above you, is pulling on the same rope.

From there it is communication and a road map: this is what we want to accomplish, this is where we are going, and this is how we get there. He points at his own staff's two decades of continuity as the reason meetings are rare — everybody already knows what is expected.

What Youth Baseball Needs From the Adults

McKinney has young sons of his own and knows the youth landscape is coming for him soon. His read is that the game itself is still in decent shape, and that what is missing is support. Youth coaches are almost always volunteers handling equipment, travel, and weather, and what they need is help rather than criticism. Unless something genuinely egregious is happening, the most useful thing a family can do is pitch in.

Players need the same thing. Kids read the stands, and McKinney admits he catches himself doing the thing he warns parents about — head in hands after a bad at-bat.

"Body language never whispers. It always screams."

His other plea is for the calendar to tilt back toward practice. Everyone wants to play games, but the skills that show up missing when players reach the college level are the ones that only get built in practice. Even the sport's biggest programs are still drilling fundamentals. If he had a youth team tomorrow, the first thing he would do is play a ton of catch.

Thirty Minutes of Catch Play, Every Day

Colorado Mesa spends more than 30 minutes a day on catch play, which McKinney freely admits is abnormal, and it eats into practice time he would otherwise use elsewhere. He is fine with that, because the teams that lose are usually the teams that gave away outs, and the worst skill his staff sees in arriving freshmen is the ability to catch and throw.

The routine is layered. Band work first to get the shoulder ready. Then athletic catch play at short distance, working different arm angles and different feet so players learn their release points. Then long toss every day, arcing under the ball out to whatever distance a player can reach, followed by pull-downs coming back in with the ball getting on top and carrying. Once the arm is loose, they move to position catch play, where infielders rehearse the actual throws a game will ask for: ball-and-glove exchanges, backhands, double-play feeds from different angles, relays, and flips to the bag. Small details get coached along the way, like the quarter turn that gets most players from wherever they caught the ball to a four-seam grip.

Two things make it stick. Coaches stay with the group instead of drifting off to other work, so the reps are watched and corrected. And the arms get healthier because they throw every day in season rather than sitting for stretches — with the caveat that players are taught to listen to a sore arm and back off when it needs it.

"If you want to get faster, you've got to sprint. If you want to jump higher, you've got to jump more. If you want to play catch better, you've got to play more catch."

Reading the Team Before the Lineup Card

The same intentionality shows up before first pitch. Colorado Mesa gets off the bus as a team and walks into the park as a team, and the staff pays attention to how opponents do it too, because how a team arrives usually says something about how it operates.

Then comes the part most programs do differently: Coach Hanks has the final say on the lineup, and he usually does not set it until after batting practice. The staff wants to see how players showed up that day, how they got loose, whether they were in rhythm in the cage, and whether something looks off. McKinney's shorthand for it is that everyone is on the same bus, but not everyone is on the same trip.

Recruiting in the Portal Era

The recruiting landscape has changed completely over McKinney's two decades, and his honest read is that college baseball has gotten older. Bigger programs can now cherry-pick and assemble one-year rosters, and some of what gets lost in that is tradition — what specific games and specific rivalries are supposed to mean.

Colorado Mesa has been built on the high school athlete, giving good freshmen early playing time and letting them grow up in the program, and the staff does not want to give that up. They are in the portal a little, they still want junior college transfers, and McKinney's framing is that a roster needs salt and pepper: some older players with experience, plenty of younger ones learning how things are done and then passing it down.

His advice to families is to match the program's homework with their own. Look at rosters and turnover. Look at how long the coaches have been there, what the campus and the city are like, and whether the words a program uses actually describe how it operates. Then define what you specifically want before you decide.

"Committing to a logo or a building or a campus — that's not going to hug you at night when you need help and it gets tough."

On timing, he likes getting on a player as a junior, when families start opening up their options, but the staff signs players all the way into August because the draft in July keeps everything moving. His one caution to a player weighing offers is to make sure the options are still there while you weigh them, and then commit without chasing the next thing. At the end of it, the student athlete is the one who has to sleep in that bed and eat in that cafeteria.

Senior Year, and the End of the Line

Asked what he would do differently, McKinney goes to something his program is working through every spring: seniors who decide the year owes them something. He did it himself, putting pressure on his own senior season, and he watches players do it now. Not everyone gets the at-bats or the innings they pictured. The players who fall in love with the team and the process — asking what they can do for the group — end up having the better year. He sees the high school version too, where a committed senior checks out of his classes and his team mentally months before he leaves.

The coaching version of the same lesson was learning to ignore the noise. As a young coach he cared too much about winning margins and outside perception, neither of which he could control, and he wishes he had figured out sooner that the only thing that matters is the team in his own building.

For players staring down the end, his advice is practical: take care of the schoolwork, and build real relationships with professors, administrators, and staff at your school, because baseball has been your identity for a long time and it is about to stop being your whole schedule. He also reframes the timeline for high school players who think college is a fresh start.

"This isn't the start of your career. This is towards the end."

If a player has been in the game since he was eight and has four years of college left, that math should change how he treats his body, his sleep, his nutrition, and his practice habits.

Metallica, His Dad, and Modeling Behavior

McKinney showed up to the podcast in a sport coat, and it turns out that is a Monday habit he has kept since 2014 to set the tone for a game week. He got it from his father, Kevin, who spent more than 50 years in athletics and remains his closest friend — they talk every single day.

The two of them are also Metallica lifers. His dad took him to concerts as a kid, and this summer's show will be his 32nd; his dad has been at 30 of them. He owns Metallica fungos, his walkout song would be "Sad But True" because it has a beat you can stomp to, and he named his first son after a Metallica song. (Ross counters with his own son, Ryder, named for the Grateful Dead's "I Know You Rider.")

What he took from his dad was less instruction than example — getting up early, the way he treated his employees, the way he carried himself.

"The best things in life are caught, not taught."

With a three-and-a-half-year-old and a one-year-old at home, he is trying to do the same thing, and he applies it to coaching as well. Telling players what to do rarely works as well as showing them. He closes with a line he thinks he picked up from a song: all we are is what we leave behind.

Episode Timestamps

Tap any timestamp to jump the player straight to that moment.

• 0:00 — Introduction
• 0:33 — Dressing for a game week, a habit he got from his dad
• 3:24 — Looking for the formula: culture, environment, and holding the line
• 6:04 — Why the seniors clean the bus, not the freshmen
• 7:29 — What he would build first if he were starting a team
• 10:30 — The state of youth baseball and how families can help
• 13:20 — Practice more, and play a ton of catch
• 14:31 — What catch play looks like at Colorado Mesa
• 16:56 — Four seams, long toss, and position catch play
• 21:31 — Getting off the bus like a team, and setting the lineup after BP
• 23:57 — Has college baseball gotten older?
• 24:54 — The portal, high school recruits, and a roster that needs salt and pepper
• 28:41 — Do the research before you commit
• 31:16 — When Colorado Mesa starts identifying high school players
• 34:41 — Senior-year pressure and falling in love with the team
• 37:55 — A young coach's lesson about outside perception
• 39:19 — Advice for players whose careers are ending
• 42:20 — Metallica, 32 shows, and picking a walkout song
• 45:14 — His dad, and why the best things are caught, not taught
• 48:45 — Closing thoughts on what you leave behind

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Sean McKinney is the associate head coach at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Colorado, where he coaches the infielders at his alma mater. Subscribe to the Baseball Forward Podcast for more conversations with the players, coaches, and leaders elevating the next generation of the game.