A new episode of The Winning Cultures Podcast is out. This one comes from a town of about 17,700 people in south Alabama, where the ballpark seats 2,500 and 13,459 fans came through the gates over two days in June.
Skylar Meade just finished his fifth season as head baseball coach at Troy University. Before that, he pitched for Louisville in the 2007 College World Series and spent fourteen years as an assistant at Eastern Illinois, Middle Tennessee, Michigan State and South Carolina. This spring, he took a Troy team that sat at 22-25 in early May to Omaha, the program’s first College World Series appearance in its 115-year history. I should say up front that my son Aaron played for Skylar this season, so I had a closer view of this one than most.
Culture Comes First, Then the Winning
Most organizations get the order backward. They win, and then everyone decides they must have a great culture. Skylar argues the opposite, and he was direct about it: Troy wins because of the culture, not the other way around. Put the culture first, and the results follow. He also made the case that culture is what keeps a roster together, which matters more than ever in college baseball. Sixty percent of his players were new coming into last season, arriving from high school, junior college, Division II and Division I, some from winning programs and some from programs that had never won anything. Trading on past glory does not work with that group. They do not care what happened three years ago. Skylar’s answer is to stay forward-facing, be honest about a player’s role, and actually do what you said you would do. When players see that happen to someone else on the roster, they believe it can happen for them.
The Coaches Set It, the Players Make It
I asked who owns the culture at Troy, the coaches or the players. Skylar’s split was clean. As head coach, he sets the expectations and points the direction, but the players are the ones who make it real. He credits recruiting for that: the program spends its energy identifying people who will carry the standard without being managed into it. His measure of how well it’s working is telling. The worst thing he has had to deal with in five years was a broken dorm door from a game of catch and a $107 bill.
Ten Hours in Montgomery
The turning point of Troy’s season was a loss. In the Sun Belt Tournament, the Trojans were in control of Southern Miss for 26 outs before giving up a two-out grand slam in the bottom of the ninth. The game ended at 11:07 at night. They were back on the field at nine the next morning in a loser-leaves-town game against South Alabama.
Skylar slept two hours. Troy won the morning game 11-10 after leading 11-4 going into the ninth, and instead of celebrating the win, he addressed the team hard for three minutes about how they closed it out. Then he changed everything he could change. New uniforms. Back to the hotel and back to the park fifty minutes before first pitch. He named the starter on the bus. Troy beat the nation’s eighth-ranked team that afternoon, and he sent the pitcher who had given up the grand slam the night before back out to finish it.
The detail that says the most came later, when he asked a senior whether he had been too harsh that morning. The answer was that it was child’s play and he could have gone harder. That is what a team sounds like when the standard belongs to the players.
A Pitcher Knocks on the Door at 6-10
I closed by asking Skylar for the one story that shows what a winning culture looks like. He went to February, when Troy was 6-10 and playing badly. One of his pitchers came up to the coaches’ offices, asked to shut the door, and got emotional. He told them the team was not connected the way it needed to be, that he had come to Troy to win, and that if he was not doing enough as a leader, they needed to tell him.
He was not asking for playing time. He was asking for accountability, and he was aiming it at himself first. This was a player who had struggled for two years. He finished the season as one of the best pitchers in college baseball and got drafted. Skylar’s read on it was that the story is not really about one guy having a hard conversation. It’s about the kind of person the program attracts, and why they keep winning.
Listen, Watch, and Subscribe
You can listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or watch on YouTube. Every episode lives on The Winning Cultures Podcast page. New conversation every month. Follow along so the next one finds you.
