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Tuesday, March 19
The Indiana Daily Student

sports baseball

Lemonis: 'IU is a dream job'

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When Marissa, 18, and Kenzie Lemonis, 13, came back from summer camp, their father, Chris Lemonis, had a surprise for them.

Chris, an assistant coach at the University of Louisville for the past eight years, had interviewed for the head-coaching job at IU.

“I was like, ‘Alright, OK,’” Marissa, who will be a senior in high school this fall, said of her reaction. “I mean, we knew this would be happening soon. I’m happy for him. He deserves it.”

Lemonis got the call from IU Athletic Director Fred Glass while driving down the road on July 2; he was offered the job.

Lemonis accepted, becoming the program’s 24th head coach. At an introductory press conference Tuesday, Lemonis expressed what this job means to him.

“Believe me, it’s kind of a dream job,” Lemonis said. “Just to have the beautiful stadium and the beautiful campus, and now they’ve had success. There’s a lot of good things here.”

This will be the first time Lemonis will be the head coach of a program. For his first head-coaching gig, he will make an annual salary of $250,000 a year for five years, making him the second highest paid baseball coach in the Big Ten, Glass said.

“Most of the contract stuff went right over my head,” Lemonis said. “I was like ‘Yes, I’ll take it.’”

The Myrtle Beach, S.C., native is replacing arguably the most successful head coach in IU baseball’s history. Tracy Smith left the program on June 24 to become the head coach at Arizona State University.

During the past two seasons, IU has gone 93-31. The Hoosiers went to the College World Series for the first time in school history in 2013 and was the first Big Ten team to be named a national seed in 2014.

Glass said usually when a coaching search is taking place, it’s because the predecessor was fired and not doing well.

But for IU baseball, the program did so well it got the attention of the prestigious Arizona State program, who enticed Smith to leave Bloomington for Tempe, Ariz.

“I wasn’t sure Tracy would ever leave,” Lemonis said. “Everybody knows what a great job he did.”

Lemonis is using that recent Hoosier success in recruiting, he said. He was the recruiting coordinator during his time at Louisville and helped the Cardinals reach three College World Series during his tenure.

Lemonis said he has several contacts in the Chicago area, and he’s had success recruiting there in the past. But most of all, he said IU will focus on its home state.

“Number one, two and three, we’re really trying to attack the state of Indiana,” Lemonis said. “This state has great players everywhere, and we’d like to get a couple more guys to play here.”

As for what kind of player Lemonis likes to recruit, he said he likes bigger players who have speed and athleticism.

“Guys who can run and move,” he said. “We want to try and get some guys that can do a little bit of ?everything.”

After saying he likes big and strong players in the press conference, Glass, a 1980 graduate of IU, said, “Chris just described my athletic package. Too bad I don’t have any eligibility left.”

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