MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Steve Sabins has been the yin to Randy Mazey’s yang as Mazey built West Virginia’s baseball program into national prominence during his eight years as his assistant, and now he is in line to inherit the program from his mentor when Mazey steps down after the 2024 season.

It was almost a mystical spell that Mazey cast over Sabins from the moment they came across each other. Mazey was in his early years of managing the WVU team, something he has done for 11 years, and Sabins was a player and then assistant coach at Oklahoma State.

“I was working at Oklahoma State and we came and played Randy and the Mountaineers a few times. I even played when WVU was still playing at Hawley Field. I remember getting to know Coach Mazey a little bit, just being in the other dugout and seeing the teams he was building and how competitive they were,” he said.

A seed was planted. Sabins moved on from player to coach when he came back to WVU.

“On one of those trips, Coach Mazey invited our coaching staff to his house on Thursday — you traveled into town on Thursday and played a three-game set on Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” he said, trying to recapture the memory of his first real meeting with Mazey.

“I’m not sure everyone on the coaching staff went that night, but I remember meeting Amanda and the other coaches. Coach Mazey did something that was kind of unusual. I’ve been in the Big 12 for 12 or 13 years now, and no head coach has ever invited our staff to their home before a series, so that was really different.”

He was impressed.

“I remember being like, ‘Man, I really respect that guy.’ That was a really nice gesture after a Thursday night practice to go over and have a nice meal at his house,'” Sabins said. “That was the first time I ever got to meet him face to face.”

The details of the night are lost forever, but Sabins knows one thing about it.

“At best, I didn’t screw up,” he said.

A couple of years later, Mazey’s assistant Steve Trout left to take the job at Texas State. It was around Christmas, which is a quiet time in the coaching business.

It was a month until practice would begin, and Mazey had to find a coach quickly. He recalled the kid from Oklahoma State he’d met that night at home.

He interviewed Sabins and offered him the job.

“For a lot of coaches, that’s a tough time to pick up and move your family; a month away from starting practice with the guys you had trained with all fall,” Sabins said. “But for me, it was easy. At the time I was a volunteer assistant at Oklahoma State. I mean, you’re talking about benefits, baby, in the Big 12. It was a no-brainer.”

“I had only been to West Virginia once or twice and my wife had never been there,” Sabins continued. “But I let her know we had an unbelievable opportunity we couldn’t pass up on.”

Sabins decided to make the move, but there was one catch.

“I couldn’t get hold of Randy,” he said, laughing at the memory. “At the time, he was off backpacking in New Zealand or the Netherlands. I remember going, ‘I can’t get hold of Coach Mazey,’ but it ended up working out.”

He progressed and grew as did the WVU team. He went from assistant coach to recruiting director to assistant head coach, and as they worked with each other, they saw that each had something totally different to contribute to the program.

“At this point, it’s hard to differentiate the qualities I came in with and what I’ve taken from him,” Sabins admitted. “I know those things have meshed together. In this business, if you are lucky enough to be around people you like for eight years, you start thinking similar and start acting similar, start to grow together as far as the plan is moving forward.”

“The obvious one is I’m a really Type A personality; more of planner and more of a long-term organizer and a calendar guy and have kind of a bigger thought process when it comes to long-term plans,” Sabins said.

“Randy’s more creative and more outside the box. He’s more of an idea guy. What I would bring to the table was structure and kind of a plan to execute on a day-to-day basis while Randy does a better job of keeping things fresh, creative and having fun with the team.”

“That’s probably the reason we work so well together,” Sabins continued. “I need to have a really strong idea of where we are trying to go long term, and he lives more in the moment. We always joke about if I were to go on a vacation. I’d have the plans 18 months out. If he would go on a vacation he wouldn’t know where he was staying 15 minutes before he booked the room.”

Those differences work into the plan to have Mazey coach another year as Sabins studies him further and helps build toward his first year, then have Mazey stay around for at least two more years to lend his side of the equation as Sabins can ease into the manager’s chair.

“Experience is what brings to the table,” Sabins said of the biggest value Mazey’s presence adds. “He’s been through the wringer. He’s seen the ups and downs and adversity. He’s seen staff changes and everything else in the business.”

“At the end of the day, if you can find people who want to be around you and have the best interests of the program at heart, you would want every single one of those people. Whether it’s Coach Mazey, fans or alumni, all of them have to be pulling the rope in the same direction.”

While Mazey’s announcement that he was leaving so soon, as he is just 57, came as something of a surprise, he’d been readying those in the baseball organization for the last few years that this could come at any time.

“Over the last three or four years Coach Mazey has been discussing being able to spend more time with his family and more time with his wife. He obviously loves what he does, but cherishes family and always puts the family first,” Sabins said.

“He’d joke about ‘This might be my freshman year.’ Or ‘this might be my sophomore year in college’, alluding to that eventually his eligibility may expire. I think it was just a little bit of a warning shot to the staff and to the people that make West Virginia baseball go that at some point he was not going to be around anymore and that as a staff we needed to take on bigger chunks and bigger roles and understand how things work.”

“I think his mission has been to prepare people inside the walls to handle the day-to-day; the things that are required to be great,” Sabins continued. “I’m not sure he had an absolutely finite plan all along. I think there are a million factors that went into it and, obviously, the family had a lot to do with it. I think he felt like now was a good time and people inside the organization were getting some opportunities with jobs.”

“I think he felt now was as good a time as ever and these guys are ready. He felt having a year to prepare is unique and special, so he made the move.”

Also working into the mix was the thought that he might lose Sabins, who had attracted attention as a head coach elsewhere.

“That played into this. I was in the mix for a major job and it kind of got into a situation where I had to look in the mirror and really make some decisions with the family, and I went to the administration and talked to them about having other opportunities,” Sabins explained.

“I think it was more that I was getting to a point in my career where some other schools were pursuing me in head coaching positions and that played into it to some degree.”

And so it was that the day came that Mazey took Sabins aside.

“He got together with me. We met in the morning and said, ‘If I were to do this, how would you feel about it? If I were to make this decision, would you be on board with this long term?'” Sabins recalled.

“My answer was ‘Unequivocally, hell yeah. This is home. It is where I had two kids. He already knew the answer, though. I’m wired because it’s his team, but I’ve thought of it as my team, too, for eight years. That’s how I work and operate. Just getting the title is a pride factor thing, but I’ve been operating like that for the entire time I’ve been at West Virginia.”

“So, of course, I want to be at the helm. Of course, I want to help this program move forward. But we’ve been doing that together for years, so nothing changes as far as my mindset goes. It’s probably the easiest decision I’ve ever had.”