ABCA Podcast, Episode 395

ABCA Minority Member Spotlight: Johnny Hernandez, Bethune Cookman University

The American Baseball Coaches Association strives to help diversify the baseball community and help bring opportunities in the game to all areas. The ABCA Minority Spotlight series looks to capture the experiences, coaching style, and impact that baseball has had on different ABCA member coaches. A new Minority Spotlight feature is released on the ABCA Podcast on the third Monday of the month and we will transcribe a small portion of the interview, which you can find below.

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The ABCA Podcast releases a new episode weekly featuring coaches from all levels of the sport. Discussions run the gamut of baseball coaching topics, from pitching, to hitting, to the mental game, practice planning, recruiting and more. The podcast is hosted by Ryan Brownlee, longtime coach and current Assistant Executive Director of the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA).

Johnny Hernandez was named the head coach for the Bethune-Cookman University baseball program in 2018. He brought in the most accomplished recruiting class in school history in 2019 ranking 59th according to Perfect Game. Prior to joining Bethune-Cookman, Hernandez spent four years at ASA College in Miami. He was the school’s first head coach and was responsible for all of ASA’s program aspects. Hernandez also served as a scouting task force member for USA Baseball since 2012, he assisted in the USA selection of players, as well as coordinating throwing programs.

Ryan Brownlee: What do you attribute to Hialeah High School being so good?

Johnny Hernandez: Man the coaches that we had again you know, coach Bilski, Hector Aguila, and Coach Marti. Man those guys knew what it was to be a Hialeah team. There weren't any travel ball teams, you know we had a long season and a short season. I think that they did a pretty good job of bringing us all together as a community.

RB: For somebody that has to start a program from scratch what would you tell them?

JH: There’s no substitute for hard work. You know at the end of the day it was a small program branched out of ASA College. We brought in about 30 brand new student athletes just to head up the program. You know, you’re getting to a point where nobody knows who you are and you have to be able to recruit not only the players but the parents and even some high school coaches.

RB: Do you feel like starting on the high school side helped you relate to those players a little more because it's a little bit close to the high school age?

JH: Yeah absolutely. I think that experience too kind of falls into where I am at today where I am able to still relate to the high school coaches and some of the junior college coaches because of the experience that I have been able to go through.

RB: Did you have to make any adjustments when you got to Bethune?

JH: Yeah, I mean, I’d be lying to you if I told you that there were no adjustments and I had everything figured out, absolutely not. That was a whirlwind of a summer, you know making the transition from junior college to now becoming a division one head coach.

RB: How actively involved are you with the recruiting process?

JH: A lot, you know. Again it’s a situation where you know we all work together with it. I don’t handcuff our assistant coaches if they see a player and everything checks off. They know kind of what, we expect for them to be with our program and meeting the standard day in and day out.