Paul Kostacopoulos (born November 28, 1964) is an American

college baseball College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. In comparison to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a smaller role in developing professional pl ...

coach. He was the head coach of the

Navy Midshipmen The Navy Midshipmen are the athletic teams that represent the United States Naval Academy. The academy sponsors 33 varsity sports teams and 12 club sport teams.2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...

until

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. Prior to Navy, he was the head coach at both

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and north ...

and

Providence Providence often refers to: * Providentia, the divine personification of foresight in ancient Roman religion * Divine providence, divinely ordained events and outcomes in Christianity * Providence, Rhode Island, the capital of Rhode Island in the ...

. With the three programs, Kostacopoulos has appeared in a total of five NCAA tournaments. Kostacopoulos played college baseball at Providence from 1984 to 1987.

Coaching career

Providence

After two seasons as an assistant at

, Kostacopoulos became the head coach for the start of the 1990 season. Kostacopoulos's first postseason appearance came in the 1991 Big East tournament. Providence then won the tournament in

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...

to advance to the 1992 NCAA tournament, where it went 1–2 and won its second-round game against

South Alabama South Alabama is the various parts of southern Alabama. Although it is not a strictly defined geographic region, it generally includes all Alabama counties south of the Black Belt. In that view, ''South Alabama'' consists of just the two counties ...

. In 1995, Providence won the Big East regular season title and received an at-large bid to the 1995 NCAA tournament, where it went 0–2. Kostacopoulos was named the 1995 Big East Coach of the Year, New England Coach of the Year, and ABCA Northeast Region Coach of the Year. Three future

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

players played under Kostacopoulos at Providence.

Lou Merloni Louis William Merloni (born April 6, 1971), nicknamed "Sweet Lou", is an American radio personality and a former Major League Baseball player. Merloni played for his hometown Boston Red Sox from – and again for part of 2003. He also played for t ...

(1990–1993) was named conference co-Rookie of the Year in 1990 and conference Player of the Year in 1993. John McDonald (1995–1996) and

Keith Reed Keith A. Reed (born October 8, 1978 in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts) is an American former outfielder for the Baltimore Orioles of the Major League Baseball (MLB). Reed was one of Baltimore's seven first-round draft picks in the 1999 Major Lea ...

(1996) also played under Kostacopoulos.

Maine

Kostacopoulos left Providence to become the head coach of

for the start of the 1997 season. He replaced

John Winkin John W. Winkin Jr. (July 24, 1919 – July 19, 2014) was an American baseball coach, scout, broadcaster, journalist and collegiate athletics administrator. Winkin led the University of Maine Black Bears baseball team to six College World Series ...

, under whom Maine had appeared in six

College World Series The College World Series (CWS), officially the NCAA Men's College World Series (MCWS), is an annual baseball tournament held in June in Omaha, Nebraska. The MCWS is the culmination of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Divisi ...

. In his first four seasons as head coach (1997–2000), Maine finished higher than fourth in the

America East The America East Conference is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with NCAA Division I founded in 1979, whose members are located in the Northeastern United States. The conference has nine core members including eight public research u ...

only once. In his last five (2001–2005), the team did not finish lower than second and qualified for two NCAA tournaments (

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

and

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discovered in ...

) by winning the America East tournament in those seasons. Kostacopoulos was named America East Coach of the Year for second-place conference finishes in 1997 and 2001.

Navy

Kostacopoulos was hired as the head coach of

Navy A navy, naval force, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral zone, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operations and ...

for the start of the 2006 season. As of the end of the 2013 season, Navy has appeared in one NCAA tournament under Kostacopoulos. The appearance came in

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

, when Navy won both the Patriot League regular season and tournament championships. He was named the 2011 and 2015 Patriot League Coach of the Year.

Head coaching record

Below is a table of Kostacopoulos's yearly records as an NCAA head baseball coach.

References