Sonoma State’s new baseball head coach, Jacob Garsez, is ecstatic about the opportunity he has to build the organization back to the winning side. 

Garsez, who grew up in Oregon, has been in love with the game of baseball since he was a little kid. He played college baseball for five years at Columbia Mason Junior College and then transferred to the College of Idaho. In his senior year at Idaho, Garsez suffered a season-ending injury in March that made him unfulfilled with the game of baseball, so that’s when he joined the coaching field. 

Garsez first started coaching in high school for a few years, but later took his coaching talents to Corbin University as an assistant coach and became the associate head coach over time. He was then offered the head coach position at the University of Antelope Valley and coached there for four years. After success at the University of Antelope Valley, he was offered a head coach position at Oregon Tech. There he took a team with four wins the year before he joined to a conference championship win within the time he was there. This year, he faces the challenge of succeeding John Goelz who served as baseball coach at Sonoma State University for 39 years before being dismissed over the summer.

“There is such a rich history in the baseball program here, and recently this program hasn’t achieved that success, and I’m excited to be a part of building it back where it was,” Garsez said. “The conference is competitive. I love the area, the campus is beautiful, and it just makes sense for my coaching career. I love that we have some experience on the team and some youth that are athletic.” 

Garsez’s vision for the team is to bring culture and his winning success at Oregon Tech over to Sonoma State. He believes that if you have a culture in a baseball organization, then you can compete with anybody. “My biggest goal this year is to develop that culture; I believe that culture wins games, and if we have a culture where guys want to compete, then we can play anyone,” Garsez said. “We’re going to have guys who want to be here, compete, and build toughness.” 

Junior pitcher Scotty Kato spoke about his beliefs on what Coach Garsez is going to bring this year, “I think that the type of culture that Coach Garsez is going to bring to Sonoma State is structure. What I mean is that he’s going to make sure we’re doing everything the right way and holding each other accountable for everything we do on and off the field.” 

With a strong vision and a winning track record, Coach Jacob Garsez is ready to lead Sonoma State’s baseball program to new heights. Students and staff here at Sonoma are excited about the new hiring and are eagerly waiting for the season to start to see what the new baseball program will look like.