Photo: Mike Stawski (Left) and Bill Kurich (Right) have both built successful programs at UMHB and Webster after developing a strong friendship during their days at St. Joseph’s (IN) and Webster. This weekend, their teams will match up in a three-game series. Photo of Stawski courtesy of True To The Cru, Photo of Kurich courtesy of Webster Athletics.
BELTON — Mike Stawski estimates he made the call to Webster Groves, Missouri no fewer than five times a week during his first year at Spalding University as a 26-year old head coach.
At times it was to seek guidance. On other occasions, it was to gain assurance that his approach to certain situations was the right one. And there were plenty more when it was just to hear that familiar voice on the other end of the line, a trusted mentor who had already gone through all the same things Stawski was facing in the present moment.
In any case, he knew Bill Kurich would be there, always willing to talk.
“Some of it was vindication; I knew the answer and just wanted to make sure I was doing it right, and some of it, I had no idea what I was doing,” Stawski, now in his seventh year as UMHB baseball’s head coach, remembers of those conversations.
Kurich was then in his fourth year as the head coach at Webster University, which had quickly emerged as the SLIAC’s top program with back-to-back 30-win seasons in his first two years on the job.
Few people were as impactful in jumpstarting Stawski’s coaching career than Kurich. It was Kurich who gave him the chance to be Webster’s pitching coach right out of college. It was Kurich who got Stawski’s foot in the door at Spalding, a fellow SLIAC program, three years later. It was also Kurich who helped Stawski navigate Year 1 as a head coach, as he transformed Spalding into a 30-win program within two seasons.
“I had never put together a schedule before, because Bill had always done that,” Stawski said. “I was like, ‘How do I even do this? Where do I start?’ He helped with that. And then it was strategy, which was something I learned from him as well. I needed help with questions like, ‘When do I do this?’ and ‘How do you teach a kid that?’ and ‘What if I have a kid that’s struggling to bunt or hit the ball the other way?’
“He was an open book. And we were in the same conference. That can’t be understated. We quickly became the next best team [in that league] and the one team that was really going to challenge them. And I could still call him and be like, ‘I’ve got a shortstop that’s struggling to turn double plays. What do you got for me?’ We’d spend a half hour on the phone and he’d help me through it.”
A bond that began at Indiana’s St. Joseph’s College in the early 2000s, and was strengthened working side-by-side for three years at Webster, has continued on in that manner, even as each has gone on to have his own success as a head coach. During Stawski’s four years at Concordia-Chicago—following his stint at Spalding—he and Kurich’s teams faced off nine different times, the last two coming in a 2019 Super Regional that sent Webster to its fourth D3 College World Series.
When Stawski took the job at UMHB in the summer of 2019, that annual meeting on the diamond was put on pause, as Stawski knew it would take time to build up his new program to the level of competing with a national powerhouse of Webster’s caliber. But everything lined up for a long-awaited rematch in 2026, and on Friday evening under the lights of Red Murff Field, Stawski and Kurich will find themselves in opposite dugouts once again.
“We’ve been trying to set this up, and finally feel like we have a team that can compete with that group. They’re a perennial regional team that has won their conference 17 of the last 18 years. It’s exciting, another challenging weekend for our guys and a chance to figure out who we are. It’s always exciting when you can face off with a mentor, someone that not only coached you, but who hired me for my first job in college baseball. When you can go up against the person who basically showed you the ropes, it makes it that much more of a fun environment.”
The St. Joe’s days
Stawski and Kurich crossed paths for the first time in a Division II baseball program that has since ceased to exist. St. Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Indiana, suspended its operations as a four-year college in 2017, taking the baseball team with it. But over a decade before, Stawski and Kurich were part of one of the Midwest’s top D2 teams; Kurich the program’s head assistant coach and Stawski an all-conference starting pitcher.
The 2005 squad—on which Stawski was a junior who made 11 starts on the mound—set a new program record for wins, going 42-19 with a trip to the Division II Regionals. It wasn’t a program that always had the most talent, Stawski says, but it was a group of Chicago-area players marked by their toughness and heart, something that would shape the way both Kurich and Stawski built their own programs in the coming years.
“A lot of what you see in both of our programs, you’ll see the DNA from those St. Joe days,” Stawski said. “That tough attitude, win-at-all-costs type of thing. The ‘05 and ‘06 teams were just tough kids from Chicago. We weren’t more talented than the other team, but we were just arrogant enough to beat you. I know that both of us have tried to find players like that and keep that DNA in our teams. You’ll see a glimpse of that in both teams this weekend.”
Kurich was the hitting and infield coach at St. Joseph’s, leading a unit that ranked in the top two in the GLVC in both batting average and runs scored in both 2005 and 2006. Meanwhile on the mound, Stawski helped lead a pitching staff that posted an exceptional 2.33 ERA during that special 2005 campaign, earning All-GLVC honors in three of his four seasons in Rensselaer. Their differing roles—Stawski being a pitcher and Kurich working with the hitters—meant they didn’t do much on-field instruction together. But that was a big part of why he and Stawski got along so well, a dynamic Stawski often sees play out in his own team as well.
“Our relationship grew so much as a player and coach because he wasn’t my direct coach. I wasn’t reporting to him everyday, so we were able to have a relationship that was a little bit different. My pitchers have a good relationship with Hunter [Jones], because they don’t work under him every day. Just like my hitters love Cooper [Hake] and James [McGlumphy], because they’re not in the bullpens and stuff. When they come down to the cages, they can just have fun with them. And that was very much my relationship with Bill.”
They bonded over their fandom for the Chicago Cubs, and their passion for the details and strategy of the sport itself. It helped that around the same time, Stawski had started to seriously consider what a future in coaching might look like. Kurich was the perfect resource for an aspiring coach to be around.
“At that point when Bill got there was just about the time where I was starting to think in my head, ‘I might want to coach,’” Stawski remembers. “It’s every kid’s dream still at that point to go on and play major league baseball, but I think I realized I was probably going to fall short of that goal and coaching became a big reality for me.
“There weren’t too many baseball guys I was around that were more of a baseball person than Bill. So a lot of our conversation revolved around the parts of the game that coaches don’t typically talk to players about; the behind-the-scenes stuff, the strategies that we work on in the office before and after practice. The in-practice stuff was simple; that was stuff I was already pretty good at and when the coaches told us stuff, I was in-tune with that kind of thing. But it was all the stuff Bill and I talked about between practices that really grew our relationship.”
Heading to Webster
After St. Joseph’s wrapped up its 2006 season, Kurich took the next step in his own coaching career, moving on to Webster University as head coach. He had previous D3 experience from his time as the hitting coach at Concordia-Chicago—the same program Stawski would later lead to a pair of D3 College World Series appearances—and inherited a program with some previous success in the SLIAC, but nothing on a national scale.
He had the hitting aspect covered, but still needed a pitching coach. Stawski fit the bill.
“You fast forward a couple years, and he got that job [at Webster],” Stawski recalls. “And then all of a sudden he’s offering me a job.”
He didn’t hesitate in taking the opportunity. Webster found success from the jump, putting together a 34-win campaign within 12 months of Kurich and Stawski arriving on campus. It featured a third-straight SLIAC Tournament crown for the Gorloks, but more importantly, yielded Webster’s first-ever NCAA Tournament victory, an 11-7 win over Illinois Wesleyan on the opening day of the Central Regional.
Stawski had been part of successful teams as a player. But seeing it through the lens of a coach provided new insights, lessons that have set him up for a 14-year run as a head coach. He is just two victories away from notching his 350th career win.
“It set the bar for the standard of what each year needs to look like for us,” Stawski said of that first experience as a college coach alongside Kurich. “We won at St. Joe and in ‘05, we were the No. 2 or No. 3 team in the country. So winning was the standard there. Then we go to Webster and they’d won a little bit but hadn’t won on a national stage at all. And we won on a national stage that first year.
“It was like, ‘This is how it works. If you want to win at a high level, these are all the things you have to do, these are the habits you have to have. From the time you spend in the office, to the relationship-building, to the way you recruit, to the way you practice, to the standard you have in grades.’
“He basically gave me the blueprint. And it wasn’t a blueprint to run a program. It was a blueprint to run a winning program. That’s the difference. I can give you a blueprint to run a program, and I don’t know how much you’re going to win. Then there’s the blueprint to run a winning program. He only showed me one blueprint.”
In the 18 seasons since, Webster has been evidence that Kurich’s blueprint is indeed a winning one. The Gorloks have produced a pair of National Pitchers of the Year, an MLB 5th-round draft pick in Josh Fleming, a streak of 16 straight SLIAC regular season titles, and four trips to the D3 College World Series. The consistency remains noteworthy, with Webster having won 30 or more games in six of the last seven full seasons.
“There’s not many Division III schools that are safe from empty recruiting classes,” Stawski said when the conversation turned to Webster’s upward trajectory since that first season in 2007. “Sometimes you go out and recruit and get a bunch of ‘Nos’. Just for us, think of all the schools that surround us that are really special; Concordia in Austin, Trinity, which is a great academic school, ETBU, UT-Dallas, which is an unbelievably baseball school and academic school.
“If we’re just going up against those and not even putting in the D1s in Texas, we very easily could look at each other in May and go, ‘We have like two good players in this class, that’s it.’ All of a sudden, you look at the record, and think, ‘How did they go from 32 wins to 21?’ Well, they had an empty recruiting class. And it happens all the time in Division III.
“But when you have a standard that Bill has set and taught his other assistants, you can really avoid that. It’s been impressive that they have kept that going for so long and haven’t had that down year. They’ve really lived up to that standard. It’s something that I think a lot of people would like to copy, because they really are the gold standard when it comes to winning conference championships and going to the NCAA Regional, with as many times as they’ve done it since Bill has been there.”
Carrying on the same mentality as a head coach
Stawski still talks about those conversations with Kurich early in his time at Spalding with genuine gratitude. It made an impact, in large part because the dynamic changes when you go from being colleagues on the same staff to opposing head coaches within the same league. It’s different, and yet the communication stayed the same. All those “inside baseball” conversations they had going back to St. Joe’s days continued, and Stawski quickly emerged as a name to know nationally in the Division III baseball landscape.
Kurich’s transparency and authenticity affected Stawski’s approach as he began gaining attention for his own coaching successes. In the same way Kurich was an open book for him, Stawski has made it a point to do the same for many other coaches, especially with the national notoriety he has gained for his high-octane baserunning system.
It is unique in the world of college coaching, where winning matters and every coach is always seeking an edge. But Stawski learned firsthand from his mentor that winning and growing the game can indeed go hand-in-hand.
“It’s why I finish almost every one of my emails when someone reaches out with, ‘If you need anything, I’m an open book. Just let me know,’” Stawski said. “Obviously the baserunning stuff has grown pretty big and people know me for that. And I’m willing to share just about anything we do baserunning-wise. Honestly, that’s because Bill was so open with sharing his knowledge and experience with me, even though it was me and him at the top of that conference. He knew if he was giving me information, there’s a chance I would use that against him. But he didn’t care. He was just trying to help me grow my program, knowledge, and coaching ability.
“As I got a little older, all of a sudden I was getting people asking me questions, which I thought was a little weird since I was the one that was supposed to be asking others questions. When they did I made sure I followed the lead and didn’t hold anything back or go, ‘Well this is another D3 team I might play down the road so I’m not going to help them.’ No, I was wide-open, just like Bill was with me. I’ve carried that on.
“I’m in my 20th year and I still don’t think I’ve really said ‘no’ to anyone. I mean, we play Southwestern next weekend. I invited those guys a couple years back, and we spent a full 8-hour day here. They videotaped everything and I went through the entire baserunning system with them. And we play them a couple times a year. But Bill taught me, ‘If you have it, share it.’ I owe a lot of my knowledge, and what we do, to him. I’m sure he also says that about the coaches who came before him. Having him as a mentor has really put me in the position I’m in.”
Webster comes to Belton for the Friday-Saturday series as the nation’s No. 15 team, led by a pair of D3baseball.com Preseason All-American pitchers in Ryan Griefelt and Carter Hunt. Exactly a week after going 1-2 against 12th-ranked Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, The Cru is stepping into the ring against another heavyweight. The fact that Stawski and Kurich are so familiar with each other’s coaching styles will only add to it, especially considering 11 of the 20 meetings between them as head coaches have been decided by two runs or less.
“We very much know how the other one coaches, strategies, and then we know how to stop it,” Stawski said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of exciting baseball being played. We typically both have pretty talented rosters. We’ll have the advantage of having already played a series. This will be their opening series, but those guys will be ready to go.”
UMHB and Webster open with a 2 p.m. doubleheader on Friday afternoon before closing the three-game series in Saturday’s 1 p.m. series finale.
