 and welcome into the special edition of the Jason Tawny show. I'm Joe Wamba joined with Jason Tawny, head coach of the baseball team and coach, let's take it back to 1999 for a second, just talk about as a 25-year-old taking a chance on a program and a program taking a chance on you and the things that you have experienced here. Yeah, actually in 1999 I started as an assistant coach to even even date myself more. I was actually 22 when I started as an assistant, but back when we were villageally college, starting a baseball program, I was here during our first official season, no field, no practice area. As a matter of fact, we used the tennis courts on the Greenspring campus. That was our main practice facility, didn't have a batting cage, and I remember a couple years ago when we had an alumni game, Justin Amig came back, one of the early guys, and we had just had our tennis courts resurfaced and added two more tennis courts, and he goes, he said, you guys have a field now, he's like, man, even the tennis courts are nicer than what I practiced here, you know, so there's been a lot that's gone on in the last 17 years. And it's been a huge part of a lot of what has happened on campus, not just in baseball, but the communication between athletics and admissions, and the student body. Doing study hours has been a huge help in the success of your program, not on the baseball field, but academically as well. Yeah, we've always excelled off the field. Our team GPA this past year is a 339, and the philosophy I brought to this program when I started as the head coach in 02 was accountability, accountability in the classroom as well. And, you know, there's a lot of people that thank me for some of the things we did, which were sometimes harsh conversations. But, you know, the department has recently also adopted our philosophy, which was forcing our guys to do study hours. And now the department is taking it over, and I think, statistically, I haven't seen it, but I'm sure our department's GPA has increased dramatically with that. You know, but that's something we had practiced for a long time. And, you know, this year was our 10th consecutive year over a 3-0 as a team. You know, having 40-ish guys on our roster, I'm always happy with that. Right. And a broad spectrum of majors, too. Myself included, when I came into your program, I was a medical technology student, and you let me have that opportunity to play for you and imagine a lot of people in that scenario are super thankful for the chance you took. You know, it's sometimes it's challenging. You know, we get nursing students, which is probably the most challenging major that we work with. You know, it's very difficult, especially going to your last two years of nursing to also play a sport. So we've had to work with guys. I know recently, one of the comments I got recently, too, was Alec Romanowski, who was a biology major, terrific student. You know, he would travel on days when he was pitching. But if we played on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, and he wasn't pitching, we'd leave him at home, our top pitcher. But he understood and it was he wasn't part of the Travels Club because it was about work, about classwork. So we have that all the time. You know, we our goal here has always been to produce productive young men in society. We want to see people succeed, not just on the field, but off the field. And I take a lot of pride in the fact that, you know, the guys that have been thankful for what we've done are the guys that actually struggled a little bit, you know, whether it was school or whatnot. And now they're successful in life. Right. And those are the ones I, you know, I'm very proud of. You have so much to be proud of if you guys haven't figured it out yet. Coach Jason Tawny is going to be retiring this season. And the stats that we look at, you know, almost 700 games, almost 300 career wins, a lot of positive things to look back on and be proud of yourself and your own career. What is it that stands out to you the most? You know, it's it's as we've gone through this process recently, and I announced to my team and my coaches and my colleagues. I think the best comment I've ever gotten from a colleague, and this wasn't recent, was when I we were talking about full time coaches and part time coaches, and I had said I was a part time coach. They looked at me and they were, you're not full time. And I'm like, no, I have a full time job outside of outside of school and so on and so forth. That's the biggest compliment I ever get from anyone is I never wanted our program to be seen as a part time program. And I think we accomplished that. You know, things I'm proud of, you know, I think back to over the last week or so as I've talked to many alumni, many parents, just the, you know, sometimes the impact you have with people that you you you you sometimes take for granted. And you don't necessarily realize some of the impacts you have. You know, and I was talking to one of our one of our guys who I suspended for academics. And I laugh about it because I know what he's doing now and I suspended him for academics. And he had to sit out a whole season for us. And he comes back to me now and says it was the best thing we ever did for him. And trust me, that was a hard conversation. I don't like having that conversation. But it's the best thing we ever did for him because it got him straight and what he needed to do. And it's something that is very important to me. As I've often said, we're going to have some guys that'll play football. It happens. But that's not what our goal is. Right. It's like I said earlier about productive young men and we've done everything we can to try to create that. Our program starts with respect, respect for everything. We've never had issues with bus drivers or anything like that. Our guys are always respectful. And it starts from the top down and I demand that out of them. And you know that. You were in my program. So you know the type of stuff I'm talking about. And I used to joke with the team. My favorite saying is how do we leave a dugout and visiting dugout? And you could probably repeat the answer. Cleaner than we found it. Absolutely. And we pick up after ourselves. And you know what? Even if it's not our trash, it's in there. We still pick it up. It's the right thing to do. Right. And in the position that I have now that extenuates through my career. So that's that's a lesson that will stay at Stevenson University slash Villa Julie. You talk about the impacts that you may not have known that you were going to have on the young men that Villa Julie and Stevenson University produced. I'm lucky enough to have been one of those young men. I know there's countless, almost probably a thousand others that had a reason for it to be at Stevenson University and be the part of the proud alumni that you've been able to produce. And the alumni group that you've produced is very comradic. Yeah. Everybody knows each other. Oh, you played at Villa Julie. Oh, yeah, I played, you know, those things happen a lot. What do you want to say to some of the guys and staff members that you've had an impact on here? Yeah, you know, in terms of you know, my former players, there's I think we have 190 that have graduated in the program. I have no idea how many more people had impacts on after that, but I knew there was 190 I'm pretty comfortable with. But you know, some of the things I'd like to say is just simply, you know, I and I've done many of these face to face with with Brett Adams, our athletic director, Tim Campbell, our vice president. Unfortunately, I haven't had the chance to have this face to face conversation with Dr. Manning because of because of his stepping down earlier this year. But but you know, for them to take a chance on a 25 year old coach and a startup program on a part time basis, you know, not knowing how that was what was going to transpire to looking forward to now in 2017. And I'm actually the oldest tenured coach on campus. You know, it's it's kind of funny. But but you know, people like that that have been very helpful. There's so many people I can name and whether it was former coaches, current coaches, players, the facilities department, the Greenspring campus. I know those guys aren't going to get much love, but but those guys helping me out with the field over there, especially when when I didn't have someone helping me like a GA. Some of those challenges we've gone through, we've you know, I would sit here. I can't sit here and tell you that we've been, you know, 100% support from everybody from day one. That has not been the case. But but generally speaking, there's always been an effort with Stevenson Athletics, Villa Giulia Athletics to continue to improve. And that's why we have 27 sports now, I think. You know, so so the administration has been very supportive in that sense. And probably what I'm what I'm most excited about, as I told my team when I was when I was telling them and and I'm smiling because I can remember the tears from me specifically, as I told them, there's tears of joy and there's tears of sadness. And the tears of sadness are the fact that obviously, it won't be me going forward. The tears of joy are our programs in a great spot. It's time for our program to have a full time coach. Our guys deserve it. Players deserve it. The school is ready for it. So I'm excited about what that future will bring. And as I told the guys when we're celebrating a Mac championship on on People's Bank Stadium Field next year, I'll be out there with them. I'll be back for senior day. I'm not going anywhere. That's why it's key that I'm retiring. You know, I'm not I'm not resigning. So I'm not being forced out or anything like that. It's it's retiring on my terms and doing what I think is is right for the program at this point. Right. Well, coach, on behalf of all of the players and my parents that you've impacted to, you know, all the pairs of parents that you've been able to bring to Stevenson. Thank you for everything that you've done for the university, for the baseball program and everything here. Yeah, I appreciate it. I can tell you that the 100% positive comments from every single person I've come across over the last really 10 days or so. So you're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. He's Jason Taney. This has been a special edition of the Jason Taney show.