Andy Stankiewicz, Grand Canyon Antelopes

Andy Stankiewicz begins his seventh season at the helm of the Grand Canyon Antelopes baseball team for the 2018 season after becoming the fourth head coach in the history of the program prior to the 2012 campaign.

After a pair of successful seasons at the Division II level in 2012 and 2013, Stankiewicz successfully guided the Grand Canyon Antelopes baseball program through a transition to the Division I level. The transition brought with it unprecedented success, as the Lopes claimed the Western Athletic Conference Regular Season Championship in the 2015 and 2017 campaigns. Amid the transition, GCU posted an impressive 71-33 (.683) mark in conference play despite being the conference’s only transitioning school. Amid the transition, Stankiewicz’s program has recorded marquee wins over the likes of Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, Arizona, Tennessee, UC Irvine and Kansas.

Stankiewicz is one of the more respected coaches in the collegiate baseball landscape, evidenced by multiple selections to lead USA Baseball national teams into international competition. Most recently, Stankiewicz guided the U18 national team to an undefeated run at the World Baseball Cup in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada in September 2017. He helped mold the team by narrowing 100 players down to a 20-team roster before leading USA to a 9-0 mark and a 61-5 margin of victory.

Grand Canyon posted a 20-4 record during conference play in 2017, the best mark the WAC has seen since Rice claimed the NCAA championship in 2003. The Lopes won their final nine weekend series of the season. GCU’s season started with a series victory over No. 22 Oklahoma State and concluded with edging out New Mexico State for the outright regular season title. Unsurprisingly, Stankiewicz was voted by his peers as the WAC Coach of the Year.

The development provided by Stankiewicz and his staff was never more prominent than in the case of Garrison Schwartz. The Phoenix native entered the GCU program as an unheralded walk-on before transforming into the 2017 WAC Player of the Year. His three-year Lopes career led to a 16th Round selection by the Atlanta Braves in the 2017 MLB Draft.

In 2015 – just the second year of GCU’s transition, Stankiewicz and the Lopes won their first WAC Regular Season title. In that championship season, Grand Canyon posted a .308 team batting average, a mark that ranked seventh in the country.