Rathbun finds ‘perfect fit’ as new Bona baseball coach | Sports

Rathbun’s family recently completed a move to Bradford, Pa., a more than four-hour drive from their old home of Herkimer. He enjoys the 15- to 20-minute commute; “It gives you a little reflection time, so it’s not too bad.”

Rathbun hopes to build a winner at Bona, a school that last had a winning season in 2017, just as he did at the community college level. His Herkimer Generals won the 2022 junior college national championship, the NJCAA World Series. Over 17 seasons, his teams had a record of 556-160, earned national rankings in 16 campaigns and made the NJCAA World Series eight times.

Rathbun had “job security forever” at Herkimer and felt comfortable there as a Central New York native. But part of him always wondered about making the leap to the Division I level. Those thoughts only intensified over the summer as he worked as a pitching coach in the Cape Cod League, the country’s most prestigious summer baseball circuit.

“Working with the best college athletes in the world over there and seeing how those relationships were very strong, it really got me thinking,” Rathbun said. “So I put my name in the hat for this job and was lucky enough to get it and then it was, wow, this is really happening. It was kind of a crazy whirlwind for me. We won the national championship at Herkimer, I came home, I spent a week (there) and then I had to go and leave for the Cape. I came back, I spent a week at home and then I had to come out here to St. Bonaventure. So it’s been a wild year. But a very lucky and excited (feeling), it’s a bag of mixed emotions.”

Rathbun grew up dreaming of a career in baseball. “Everybody that plays Little League baseball believes that,” he noted.

He cherished memories of playing catch with his father, a police officer, at the park and grew up quoting baseball movies like Field of Dreams and Major League. Then he followed a familiar path, serving in the U.S. Army for three years as the fourth generation family member to serve in the military, followed now by a fifth, his son A.J., who serves in the U.S. Coast Guard.

That military service illuminated what Rathbun wanted to do in his professional life.

“It was just a major part of honor and respect that goes with that and I think the biggest thing that I get out of that is honesty,” Rathbun said. “When I was playing in college, sometimes I didn’t always get the truth and that was difficult to deal with sometimes. As a person, sometimes you just want people to be honest with you. So I found that that was a core value that hung with me through this whole process. Even though those conversations may be difficult sometimes, when you have them they seem to work out the best that way. That’s what I really got from those military values is honesty and respect and honor and your word and doing something that you say you’re going to do. I think there’s a lot of value in that.”

After his three-year Army commitment, Rathburn played collegiately as a two-way player at Herkimer and later pitched at Division II Erskine College in South Carolina. By the time he graduated, he already had his sights on coaching, and a familiar place called back to him: his coach at Herkimer was retiring, and he had a chance to return as a first-time boss.

“It was just the perfect timing,” Rathbun said. “That fell into place and it just kind of ran (from there). We were a very sub-.500 team at Herkimer until I got there and we kind of hit the ground running. We broke their school win record my first year and qualified for the World Series for the first time ever my second and third years, so from that point on we just kept growing the program.”

Despite his youth at the time, Rathbun credited his experience in baseball for his early success as a coach.

“I always tell people I’m just a winner; I can’t stand losing,” he said. “So I don’t even know that I would coach if I wasn’t winning. Losing physically makes me ill sometimes. I dislike it that much, so I just worked really, really hard, recruited really hard, understood where the value is and that’s in the talent of the players.”

A coach can’t do just one aspect well, be it recruiting, teaching or managing players on his roster. Rathbun said he needs to balance all of those to have success. He said he learned the importance of relationships through his 18 years at Herkimer; “It helps you figure out what a player’s ‘why’ is, what their drive is.”

“It’s crazy to throw the word out there as much as we do, but there’s that love, that love of the person you’re playing with or playing for,” he said. “I think that has a lot of value, and I’m giving to them as much as they’re putting in. Very early here, you see the relationships growing strong as well as the talent and play is getting better. It’s getting better in a very short amount of time, and a lot of that comes from just being honest and talking to kids.”

Affixed to Rathbun’s office door in the Reilly Center is a schedule for individual meetings with each player.

“I’ve got kids coming in here every week and we sit down and talk for 10 minutes, just to have some conversations,” he said. “It’s not a ‘I’ll see you at practice,’ and you don’t see ‘em all week. We’re trying to build relationships and I think that’s a big, big part of the equation.”

Rathbun had considered offers to be a Division I assistant before this year, but never as a head coach. Given his sense of honor from the military, the hardest decision came with an offer to go to West Point as an assistant.

“That was a very difficult one to not make the move, but the reality was that everything was so great at Herkimer,” he said. “It needed to be the perfect thing for me to make that jump and that’s what St. Bonaventure is, it’s the perfect fit for me. That’s the student-athletes that I’m looking for, that St. Bonaventure is the perfect fit for them. It’s not meant for everyone, but it was perfect for me and I’ve got to find the student-athletes that are perfect for it.”

Bona brought that opportunity at just the right time, as he had reached the top of the junior college level. Whether he coaches at Bona for as long as he did at Herkimer, Rathbun doesn’t see the job as a stepping stone.

“I’m not one that’s going to just jump at a job because it’s another job,” he said. “It has to be the perfect fit, and right now, St. Bonaventure (is that).”

Rathbun considers the Atlantic 10 the best Division I baseball conference in New York, rivaling the Big East, and by staying in the state, he can call on existing relationships in recruiting.

“Being familiar with this area, I had sent a few players here that were successful, so I knew the type of student-athlete that this school needed to be successful. I think the guys that I sent here were good,” Rathbun said. “I just felt like I could leave at lunchtime and be back where I grew up for dinner, so it’s not that far away. Just all of those things kind of pointed to this being the spot, and I think for everybody once you step foot on this campus, you feel something good. It just has a feeling to it of calmness, like you’re in the right place.”

Salerno remained on staff as Rathbun’s top assistant, which he called a big help with the transition. Bona has already landed some recruits and made some aggressive plans for future scheduling, including with Louisville in 2024 and Vanderbilt in 2025.

“At some point after 18 years you think to yourself, that’s never going to be a reality. I’m getting older, I’m never going to get this opportunity to be a Division I coach,” Rathbun said. “Then when it’s here, it’s like wow, I’m living it. But I feel like we’re having success. The team’s getting better, we’re getting recruits, everything’s coming together early in this process.”

Rathbun said he’s had the support of the Bona athletic department and new AD Joe Manhertz, who he called “an amazing athletic director, (who) has vision and works just as hard as we do as coaches,” along with his direct supervisor, Steve Campbell.

“It’s great to have great support to allow me to do these things and to start building,” Rathbun said. “It’s great to have B.J. here, somebody who’s been in the program for so long, to help me with this transition. Our relationship is growing stronger every day. I have not had that moment yet where I’m say, man, I miss Herkimer. I’m really happy every day coming to work here.”