New UT baseball coach David Pierce works his way into dream job

HUNTSVILLE - Twenty-five years ago, David Pierce was an assistant baseball coach at Episcopal High, and in the summer he would mentor a bunch of college players in a rag-tag league at Butler Athletic Complex. The fun-loving Pierce, about a decade older than most of his minions, would occasionally pitch a few late innings in the summer league, to the hoots and hollers of his players.

Around that same time, fellow Houstonian Roger Clemens had just won his third of seven Cy Young awards. On Wednesday night, Clemens sat in the front row of Don Sanders Stadium on the Sam Houston State campus and watched Pierce coach his beloved Texas Longhorns.

Clemens, a former UT and big-league standout and father of two current Texas players, has long been on top of the baseball world. Pierce has meticulously worked his way up the ladder, loving the baseball life on all rungs along the way. The most thrilling part of his new job, leading one of the nation's most storied college baseball programs?

"When you put this uniform on, and it says 'Texas' on front," Pierce said on Wednesday, while watching SHSU take batting practice prior to a Longhorns-Bearkats nonconference contest.

UT (3-2) prevailed 7-2 over Sam Houston (2-2) to give Pierce his first road victory as Longhorns coach. UT split a four-game series with Rice last weekend in Austin.

'The right way'

Pierce, in his first season at UT after replacing the fabled Augie Garrido, is a quintessential example of paying your dues, as his brother-in-law Gary Kubiak, the former Texans and Broncos coach who won a Super Bowl with Denver a year ago, pointed out.

"David has come up the right way," said Kubiak, who like Clemens attended Wednesday night's game. "He started in high school, worked his way up and now is back in the stadium where he first got a chance to be a college head coach. It's impressive, when a guy starts off like he did and works his way to the level he's at right now.

"I'm proud of him, and in other ways, too. He's just a great person."

An example of that came on Wednesday, with Texas even playing at Sam Houston in the first place. For more than a century, no Longhorns baseball coach could be troubled to make the 160-mile trek from Austin to play in Huntsville, although Sam Houston has played in Austin 90 times in that span.

Enter Pierce, and enter UT playing for the first time on the Sam Houston State campus on Wednesday.

"We needed a road game, and I knew we were going to play on a good surface in a great venue," Pierce said with a shrug. "It matched our schedule."

It helped that Sam Houston also gave Pierce his first break as a college baseball head coach only six years ago. Pierce, 54, had stops as an assistant at Episcopal, head coach at his high school alma mater St. Pius X, head coach at Dobie High and then as an assistant at his college alma mater, Houston, for two seasons. He played for the Cougars in the mid-1980s.

Pierce then served as an assistant to Wayne Graham at Rice for nine seasons. Six years ago, an Owls loss has never meant so much to UT's future.

In 2011, the Owls lost twice at home in a regional and were eliminated earlier than expected. Mark Johnson, a longtime Texas A&M coach before moving on to Sam Houston, had retired from the school following that season, and athletic director Bobby Williams had already interviewed four candidates for the Bearkats' slot.

"That Sunday evening, I was standing on my driveway, and I told my wife (Susan), 'I think it's time I interview for that job, if it's not too late,' " Pierce said. "I called Bobby Williams that Monday, he interviewed me on Friday, and he hired me the following Tuesday. We hit the ground running."

Williams said he was impressed with Pierce's ability to combine both a "happy-go-lucky" approach with an authoritative plan on how to regularly reach the NCAA Tournament, and the athletic director set all other applications aside. It turned out a brilliant risk, considering Pierce's three Sam Houston teams all made the NCAA field from 2012-14. Three years ago Tulane took its own chance on the up-and-coming Texan.

After exiting Sam Houston, Pierce led the Green Wave to consecutive NCAA bids the past two seasons. When Garrido was reassigned last year, UT athletic director Mike Perrin brought Pierce back across the Sabine River with the idea of returning the Longhorns to postseason prominence.

Substandard stretch

UT has won six national titles, the last coming in 2005, but had missed the NCAA postseason in three of Garrido's final five seasons.

"David has always known what he wants to do," Kubiak said, "and he's worked really hard to get there."

Pierce also realizes he'll never be under as much scrutiny in college baseball as he is in Austin, which is why he asked Kubiak how he's dealt with an unceasing spotlight. Kubiak, 55, retired from the NFL this year, citing health reasons, only a year after leading the Broncos to a victory in Super Bowl 50.

"I told him after they had won the Super Bowl and I had moved into this position, 'Gary, all of the media involved and (other obligations) is pretty crazy,' " Pierce said with a smile. "He said, 'Yeah, it's like the Super Bowl. And now you're in the Super Bowl.' "