Southeast baseball coach Steve Bieser leads team by example

Steve Bieser is in his third year as the coach of the Southeast Missouri State baseball team that is on pace to win a second straight regular-season Ohio Valley Conference championship. Bieser was named the OVC Coach of the Year last season when the team tied the program record for wins with 37 and went 23-7 in conference play. Southeast is currently four games ahead in first place in the OVC with a 19-5 conference record and is 28-15 overall.

What does it take to coach and lead this team that is on pace to repeat as conference champions?

Well I think what it takes is an entire unit of guys, a quality group of guys, that are willing to put in the work and the effort that it takes to be good, and I think that's what we have here. We set a culture that it's all about hard work, and the more work you put into it the more you get out of it. So I mean that's something that our motto is "committed to excellence," and we know if we reach for that enough things are going to happen, and we just try to do everything the right way. I think that's what really kind of helped us at least start to define our program. I think we still have a ways to go, and there's still things that we're working on every single day. But the biggest thing is just being willing enough to put the hard work in.

What are the most important ethics and values that you demonstrate yourself to your team as a leader each day?

The thing that I try to do is lead by example. I don't say one thing and do something else, and the things that I want our guys to do really is to be generous to give, and whether that's time or their talents, whatever it is, we try to get out in the community and give back to the community. We try to do the same thing within our organization -- we want to be not so self-centered. We want to make sure that when we're playing the game of baseball that we're trying to help the person that's batting behind us in the batting order. When we come in to relieve a starting pitcher, we're trying to get him out of that inning and help him, and it's all about serving one another. That's something I really got into a few years ago is about serving leadership. I think if you have that mindset and you actually live that mindset, it rubs off on the rest of your players.

The one thing that I take pride in is a goal of mine and that is to never let anybody outwork me, and that goes from the guys on our team. I'm not in the weight room doing the same stuff they're doing, I'm not on the field doing the same stuff they're doing, but I am constantly trying to do more than the opponents that are doing the same job that I'm doing, and I really expect the same out of my coaching staff to outwork the assistant coaches all the way across the country. So our big thing is about serving leadership.

What is a challenge each coach faces and how do you overcome that challenge?

Well I think each school where you're at presents different challenges, and for us I think that the challenges that we have are more from a facility standpoint of trying to make sure that we're caught up with the rest of the teams in the OVC. Because when it truly comes down to being competitive and winning, it's about having the right group of guys among campus playing in your program, and recruiting is very challenging for us. We've got to work harder and we've got to make steps in the right direction to make the recruiting process a little bit easier for us and that's something we talk about hard work. We feel that we really have to put in extra work to make sure that we're covered when it comes to a recruiting standpoint. So I'd say that's one of the biggest obstacles that we face, but everybody faces challenges and the one thing that I don't want, that I really don't want any of our players or coaching staff to make is we don't want to make any excuses. We're blessed to have what we have, we're blessed to be in a position that we're in and we're going to make the most of it.

What are you most proud of with this year's team?

Each year that you go into coaching, what you want to see and the thing that you're most proud about is seeing a group of guys all start bonding and coming together and working for one common goal, and we've been very fortunate. With last year's group, we saw everybody kind of combine and work for that same goal, and I see the same thing this year. I see guys that are really focused to being the best that they can be and we talk about winning the day and just doing everything they can do during a certain day to be the best them, and that's what I see this group doing. I think when you see that all come together and you look back at the journey that you had through the course of a season that starts in the fall with the hard work in the weight room and all the conditioning and you kind of get that all come together when you start playing the games and things start getting rewarded for all the hard work you put in. I think that's what's really special about each season.

How do you continue to grow as a leader each day?

I think it's how everybody grows. It's about education, it's about reading and trying to pick up more books and talk to more people. I think the more you communicate with people in your profession -- one of the things I try to do is I try to talk to every head coach just whether it's five or 10 minutes before we start a series and just kind of see where they're at and what's going on. But it's about educating yourself and just trying to stay on top of the trends that are going on in college baseball, the trends of professional baseball and we go to conferences in the winter and get to basically be in the same building with every Division I college coach in the country. It's about never stop learning, you've got to continue to learn. I've been in the game for a long time, and I still feel that there's things that I need to work on and still feel that there are things I learn every single day.

How do you keep developing this team?

I think now is the time where it starts to get a little tough and what you've got to do is you've got to continue to push, continue to encourage and you've got to expect more each day out of the guys. I mean, if ever we get complacent then we've hit a rut. We've got to make sure that we're trying to improve every single day and that's really our focus right now.

We've had a lot of things go our way this year and had some success but we've also had some hiccups and we've rebounded from those. What we want to do is make sure that -- when you go into a tournament it's not always the best team that wins the tournament, it's the team that's playing the best at that time. We're trying to build to make sure that we're playing the best baseball at that time of the year because we know our goal is to get beyond the conference tournament to get into a regional. Right now the way the OVC sits, the only way to get to a regional is to win your conference tournament. So we're taking care of the business we need to right now and trying to get that No. 1 seed, get that bye and make it as easy as possible to win the tournament for us. But you've still got to go in and be prepared ready to play, so I think the challenge right now is to kind of get everybody motivated and everybody understanding that what we've done up to this point, it's not an accident, it's a result of hard work and you can't back off at this point of the season and just cruise through the season.

What is one characteristic every leader should possess?

Wow, I don't know if there's one. I think a good leader, there's so many things that need to be combined in there, but I really feel patience is something that you've got to have. The reason I say that I think it's the one thing that I try to work on the hardest because I'm very demanding. I expect a lot from our players, I expect a lot of their time, I expect that they're committed to this game as much as I am and when sometimes I don't feel that I think it wears on my patience, and I've got to really work on my patience. All coaches at this level, they know how to coach, but being able to relate to players, being able to put yourself in their shoes and understand where they're at is a difficult thing, but that's what you've got to be able to do. You've got to be able to lead men and not just be a baseball coach, and I just think being able to lead men and having the patience and just the drive to keep them working hard is the biggest thing about leading.