The Region's Team Of Northwest Indiana

Whiting, Ind. – June 18, 2018 – Ask anyone who has worked with Adam Enright over the last seven years and they’d tell you it was a matter of when, and not if, he would achieve his goal of becoming the head coach of a college baseball program.

The question of when has been answered as Enright has been hired as the head coach at Missouri Valley College, an NAIA institution in the Heart of America Athletic Conference located in Marshall, Mo. After seven years as an assistant coach, Enright will call the shots as he takes over his own program.

“There are a lot of young coaches who get into the profession of coaching with this goal in mind,” Enright said. “I am extremely aware and cognizant that not everybody gets this opportunity. There are a lot of really good coaches who haven’t received this opportunity and are trying to work their way into a head coaching position. I’m very blessed and fortunate because every head coaching job that opens up in college baseball gets hundreds of applications. For Missouri Valley to have this faith in me even though I’ve never been a head coach at a school at the collegiate level, words can’t describe my gratitude.”

Enright, a graduate of Munster High School and the University of Southern Indiana, spent the last five years as an assistant coach at Trinity Christian College under head coach Justin Huisman, who managed the Oilmen from 2012-2014.

“First and foremost, to be a good head coach, you’ve got to be a good leader and you’ve got to know what you’re talking about,” Huisman said. “Adam definitely knows what he’s talking about. He’s very knowledgeable in what he teaches the players. For me, he specialized in hitting, base running and recruiting, but he’s really a jack of all trades. He knows the game inside and out, and he has a good work ethic. Things he doesn’t know, he’s always trying to learn. He cares about the players getting better and he wants to win. All of those things combined are going to make him a good head coach.”

During his time with the Trolls, Enright helped lead the team to the program's second-ever NAIA Opening Round berth in 2018 after the program won its first CCAC Tournament title. He was the hitting coach for an offense that finished in the Top 25 nationally in most categories, including third in doubles per game and sixth in batting average. Enright signed 17 all-conference student-athletes over four recruiting classes, including 2018 CCAC Player of the Year Tyler Sroczynski.

“I’ll remember the relationships with Justin and the players that came through,” Enright said. “I’ll remember raising the standards there. We went from a field on campus that was kind of laughed at to a field that was probably the best one in our conference. Along with that, we raised the standard of the players we got and the expectations once they got there. I’ll remember the growth of the program from the facility upgrades to talent upgrades to the expectation upgrades.”

Enright has taken the Oilmen to new heights during his time in charge of the team, leading the team to the 2016 MCL Championship, three straight winning seasons and the franchise record for wins in a single season in 2017. He also broke the franchise record for career wins by a manager last season. Four years of experience running the Oilmen will benefit him as he takes on his new role at Missouri Valley.

“The first thing I learned when I took over the Oilmen is that once you are in charge of more administrative roles as far as logistics and managing people, you have less time and less energy to afford to the baseball side of things,” Enright said. “That’s one thing that will help my transition to Missouri Valley. I know that I’m going to have a lot of duties to take care of, and it won’t be such a shock to me.”

Enright spent three years as an Oilmen assistant coach under Huisman before taking over as the manager in 2015. He first worked under Huisman with the Oilmen in 2012, then the two joined forces at Trinity Christian starting with the 2014 season.

“I didn’t expect to have him for five years at Trinity,” Huisman said. “I knew that he had the qualities to become a head coach of a program someday, and I knew he had been seeking it for a few years. I was blessed to have him for as long as I did with the Oilmen and at Trinity. I’m very happy for him and (his wife) Kimmy. Hopefully along the way I’ve been able to teach him a few things, and he’s definitely taught me a lot as well and made me a better coach.”

Before joining the staff at Trinity, Enright spent one season as an assistant coach at Chicago State and one at Arkansas Little Rock. He was a member of the 2010 Southern Indiana team that won the NCAA Division II national championship.

“Once I played for (Southern Indiana head coach) Tracy Archuleta, I figured out that I wanted to be a college head coach,” Enright said. “At the same time, I was realistic that it takes a long time to get there and I’ve been blessed to be around a lot of really good college baseball coaches and lot of guys who have been down the path of doing your time as an assistant. My goal was to be a head coach before I was 30, and I barely made it. I’m a young head coach, but putting in 7 ½ years before getting there has made me appreciate the opportunity. I don’t take it for granted.”

Over half of the student body at Missouri Valley is comprised of athletes. The school’s athletically-driven nature drew Enright to the job.

“They have a tradition of supporting athletics very well on all fronts,” Enright said. “From the president of the school all the way down, athletics is very well supported and held in an extremely high regard. The athletic community is tight-knit and family-oriented. Being a small school, everybody knows that there are challenges that you have to overcome to succeed. The way they band together and help each other overcome those challenges is really cool to see. The support from the people there is overwhelming.”