Dedicated To The Details

On Sunday, June 11, Matt Swope’s air conditioning unit went out and he couldn’t sleep all through the night. He was exhausted as the next morning rolled around, as he had to sleep in the unbearable heat of the Maryland summer.

Had he known what would happen on that Monday, he probably would have lied awake, tossing and turning for completely different reasons.

After a sleepless night, Swope got a call at 9:40 a.m. on the morning of June 12 from Josh Kaplan, Maryland’s Associate Athletics Director of Facilities, Operations and Events who serves as the sport supervisor for the baseball team. He asked Maryland’s associate head coach if he could come into the office for a meeting with Damon Evans, the Barry P. Gossett Director of Athletics, at 11 a.m. that morning.

Rob Vaughn, Maryland’s head baseball coach who had presided over the most successful period in Maryland baseball history, had just accepted the head coaching role at the University of Alabama earlier in the morning. Within hours, Evans knew who he wanted to fill the spot. There were no other interviews. No nationwide search process to conduct. It was just Matt Swope.

Swope drove down Route 1, the same road he drove down everyday to go to DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville. He made his way into College Park, where he weaved through the streets of College Park that he grew up walking around as a child with his parents, both of whom are Maryland alums. He walked into Evans’ office in the XFINITY Center, a building that was built during Swope’s time as a student-athlete, where he roamed the outfield at Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium from 1999 until his graduation in 2003.

In that meeting, Evans offered Swope a position that he said was a “goal,” which he said was just an understated way of saying a “dream job”. And as the meeting concluded, the kid from Prince George’s County whose life revolved around College Park secured his first collegiate head coaching role at the school he’s called home since he was born, as Swope became the ninth head coach of Maryland baseball in the program’s 132-year history.

“We are excited to name Maryland alum Matt Swope as the new head coach of his alma mater,” said Evans in a release on Monday. “Matt has been a vital part of the most successful era in Maryland baseball history, one where we set numerous records. He has been directly responsible for our offensive explosion over the last three years as we set records for runs scored, home runs, hits, RBI, slugging percentage, and walks. Being a hometown guy, I know what this means to Matt, being able to lead his beloved Terrapins. We are excited to welcome Matt and his family in this new role as we look to continue the wonderful momentum Maryland baseball has built in recent years.”

In many ways, Swope was the ideal candidate to take over as the program whose identity and culture has been on the upswing since his playing days. Between his time as an outfielder for the Terps at the turn of the century and his decade-plus stint on the Maryland coaching staff, Swope has worn many hats and knows the ins and outs of how to build a successful program through many lenses. He has been a constant for the team as it has embarked on some of its boldest adventures, and in the process, the New Carrollton, MD native has seen how two different coaches have molded Maryland baseball into a nationally relevant program in the past decade.

In Wednesday’s introductory press conference, where he stood on the same field he’s stood on for the better part of 25 years, he reminisced on how the program has evolved since his playing days. The team progressed from having four scholarships in a stacked ACC conference during the late ‘90s into the early 2000s to becoming back-to-back Big Ten champions that hosted its first NCAA Regional last year in front of a packed house at The Bob.

“When I was able to see this place packed last year while hosting an NCAA Regional, I was in tears, literal tears,” Swope said. “I could not hold it back. And I didn't care. It was the greatest night of my life. It's something that I would have never dreamed of decades ago. But that's the standard that has been set by us and the staff and I look forward to helping make that happen again.”

Swope held the Director of Operations position between 2013-17 during the John Szefc era, when the Terps reached back-to-back NCAA Super Regionals in 2014 and 2015, constituting Maryland’s lone appearances in the Super 16. In that role, Swope worked behind the scenes to develop the brand of Maryland baseball into an appealing place of development for prospective recruits. Through handling tasks ranging from fundraising to social media management to organizing travel logistics to renovations to Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium, Swope developed an eye for the details of running a winning baseball team on and off the field. 

In reflecting on the growth of Maryland baseball culture since he joined Szefc’s staff, he talked about the tradition that was instilled into the program, growing so that former players would continue to stay connected to the program, much in the same way he had after he departed from College Park.

“When I came back with Coach (Erik) Bakich just to get involved with the players, the sole focus was to build tradition,” Swope said. “Build something that people could be proud of, be thankful for, that they want to come back to. So that's been my sole focus. Over the course of these 12 years, the winning is great, but to look at (Anthony) Papio over there and to look at Tommy (Gardiner) and these guys that played here that wore the jersey like I did, that walked the steps, that know the nooks and crannies of the different things, that means the most to me.”

His hard work in the Director of Operations position would be duly rewarded in 2017. Vaughn, who worked as an assistant coach with Szefc during his entire tenure in College Park, assumed the head coach mantle in 2017 and promptly named Swope to his coaching staff, where he would work with developing Maryland’s offense over the course of his six seasons.

In Swope’s tenure as an assistant coach, he developed the Terps from the ground up, turning Maryland into one of the most consistent units in the country. In his first season as assistant coach in 2018, the Terps scored 271 runs, which ranked 199th in the nation. Over the course of the next half decade, the offense blossomed into a powerhouse built not on top recruits, but on good fits in the lineup who evolved into all-conference and All-American caliber players.

“I think we've done a really good job of better than most is development,” Swope said. “Matt Shaw, Luke Shliger, Nick Lorusso, none of these guys were in the top 500 in high school, so we take a lot of pride in that.”

On the back of homegrown talents such as Chris Alleyne, Maxwell Costes and Troy Schreffler Jr., who Vaughn and Swope recruited in their first few years on staff, the Terps more than doubled their scoring total from 2018, posting 572 runs to rank second in the country. The team slammed balls all over the yard, launching 137 home runs to also finish second nationally.

After a season of such tremendous offensive success, Swope found a new and unorthodox method to help the 2023 roster be set up for breakout campaigns.

This past season has seen Swope delve into a detailed form of coaching known as Motor Preferences, where he has worked with the Terps offense to reach their maximum potential through leaning into how each individual player operates. Through his emphasis on learning how players naturally function through small, often unnoticeable body preferences such as how someone’s fingers interlock when clasped together or which arm goes on top when crossing arms, Swope has worked to build unique “motor profiles” for Maryland’s team to help them reach their peak by training, hitting, pitching and fielding in ways that are natural, don’t exert as much effort on their bodies and lower risk of injuries.

“I'm a savage learner,” Swope said. “I've always had a growth mindset. If there's something out there and baseball to be learned, I want to make sure that I learned whether I agree with it or not, so I'm prepared for our players, other coaches, parents, whatever it may be. It has completely changed everything I do with the hitters and how I coach and I'm excited to bring that to the entire staff and weave that into every tiny thing we do with this program.”

Swope started his own business called Motor Preference Experts, where he and co-founder David Genest help baseball players at the collegiate and professional levels to get the most out of their body through understanding their motor preferences and providing drills to help them get the most out of their training. 

Swope and Genest had studied motor preferences for a couple years to better understand it before implementing it with the Maryland baseball program. In 2023, many players had career years in the Terps lineup, led by Big Ten Player of the Year Matt Shaw, All-American Nick Lorusso and All-Big Ten First Team selection Luke Shliger. All three future MLB Draft picks set personal bests and program records at the top of the Maryland lineup through buying into Swope’s motor preference training methods. 

With Lorusso especially, the motor preference training helped him to unlock his full potential in his second season with the Terrapins. 

“I was trying to put everybody in their heels and trying to have them all torque in their back, right heel and screw into the ground and create a lot of force to hit better or to throw better,” Swope said. “But Nick is what we call an aerial mover, so he prefers the weight in his forefeet. I was coaching him on and he was still good, but when he first got here, I was coaching him wrong and I didn't have him in his best athletic position. There's obviously an extreme amount of details that go into that but that's just a very obvious thing where I was coaching him as an opposite mover from what he actually really is.”

With an adjustment to his motor preferences, Lorusso became a star for Maryland’s high-powered offense, setting single-season program records in hits (100), home runs (26), RBI (105), extra-base hits (46) and total bases (202). 

As a result of his coaching, many of the Terps who have come through in the system are breaking the records he once set, but in Swope’s eyes, it’s something that he hopes that players are able to do as a sign of progress within the program. When Luke Shliger broke his runs record in 2023, he said that watching the players he coaches every day break his record make him just as proud as setting the record himself.

“Those are the types of things for me personally when it's even though it's my record, you know that you're moving a program along,” Swope said. “You're moving it along with better players, more production, all those things, so that makes me just as proud to see these guys that I'm coaching and working with every day break it because it means we're moving the program along and growing it like we should.”

As Swope sets out to find the next Chris Alleyne, the next Matt Shaw, the next Nick Lorusso, he will be able to tell incoming players all about what it means to be a part of Maryland baseball and the culture of the athletic program because it’s all he has lived since growing up. He has been the architect for the growth of the Dirty Terps, as he’s been a part of the team for nearly a quarter of its 1,885 total wins over 132 years.

The whole journey has now come full circle for Matt Swope. No one knows the program from a player, behind the scenes or coaching perspective quite like him. He’s progressed from sitting on the bleachers at The Bob to sitting on the edge of the dugout, where he will now be calling the shots as the head coach of the team he grew up loving.

“Growing up a Maryland fan, I've been coming here all my life,” Swope said. “This has been a part of my life since I was born. Having both my parents gone here, I've spent all my childhood at these fields here and my experiences, so that gives me an advantage from that point to come in here as a player and come back as a staff member. I think that when you look at it, I've done every role and job in this program, so that's a big part of understanding the different roles and what it takes.”