The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

The Official Student News Media of Southeastern Louisiana University

The Lion's Roar

    From second assistant to the SLC Coach of the Year:

    The Lion's Roar / Elizabeth Brown

    The Lion’s Roar: To start, can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

    Matt Riser: This is going into my ninth season at Southeastern, my third year as the Head Baseball Coach, and to be honest with you, when I took over as the Head Baseball Coach when Jay [Artigues] took over as the Athletic Director, I couldn’t have been more blessed to have been in a better position to do it. We had a club we had built together with some great, young men and he told me “take this thing to another level” and so far, in the first two years, we have. We won the Tournament Championship and we won the Southland Championship last year, and that’s kind of been the goal for us every year. Outside of baseball, you know, it’s funny. My degree is in biomedical engineering so I was going to do the whole med school deal, and somewhere along the line, I figured out, honestly I have a great passion for the game of baseball, but I figured out that this is my calling. The fact that I get paid for this, I feel like I’m ripping off the state of Louisiana. I get to do what I love and enjoy being around the young men that I have as players but also the crew I have coaching for me as well. There’s only really two seasons. There’s baseball season and there’s hunting season. I’m a big deer hunter and I’m a big outdoorsman. I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to make a living off of being outdoors with being able to coach baseball. 

     

    TLR: What about your family?

    MR: I was born and raised in Picayune and I came over this way. My wife is from the same area, Carriere. I [have] two younger brothers. One now lives back in Picayune. He just moved back. He’s a loan officer for a company called Southern AG Credit and just turned 28. Then I have a younger brother who just graduated in May from LSU [Louisiana State University] in petroleum engineering and is now actually working out in Middleton, Texas. My mom is retired, [my] dad is still working as a family practice physician back in Picayune, and they make as many games as possible. All three of the boys, including myself, played high school sports and college sports, so it’s kind of been a dinner table talk for a long time. My wife found out real fast if it’s not about baseball or deer hunting, it might not get discussed. 

     

    TLR: Off of the field, what is your life like? 

    MR: There isn’t a lot of off the field time, to be honest, with the amount of time we put in from a practice standpoint. You know it’s funny when I got into the profession, all the coaches I talked to said ‘Hey look, realize we do more than just come out and practice and games.’ People don’t realize in the off-season how much we put in recruiting. We’re constantly out on the road, out and about trying to find next year’s players or the following year’s players to keep doing this thing and not just be a one hit wonder, but do this thing year in and year out consistently. So we spend a lot of time trying to mold our men. There’s a lot of things we try to do to build our team chemistry outside of the ball park whether it’s team dinners, us going play team paint ball or getting the whole team together to go watch a basketball game or football, tailgating. We do a lot that involves the guys as well. When we don’t have something that is baseball related that is finally family related, the wife and I and the staffs’ men spend a lot of time together. We do our Sunday fun day, as we call it, on Sunday nights. We like to go to over to the bowling alley over here to Tangi Lanes, and we’ll go bowl a few rounds and even little X-man [Riser’s four-month old son was present during the interview and being held by Riser] here enjoys it and the music. 

     

    TLR: Is this your first child? What is his name? 

    MR: Yep, four and a half months old, and he’s so good, we just want to have another one, and then at the same time, it scares us that not every baby is like this. [His name is] Jacob Alexander. He’s named after his two uncles, my two younger brothers. We like to call him “Xander.” My daddy likes to call him “X” to keep it short. 

     

    TLR: How does your family inspire you?

    MR: You know, it’s funny, before having our first child, there’s a lot of inspiration. It starts with my grandfather and instilled a lot of the qualities we use in teaching our young men about baseball but also about the game of life. He was a big, big mentor to me before he passed away. I get a lot of my independence from my momma. I’m a little bit hard headed which is good and bad; it’s a part of my strength. I have a lot of trust in faith and confidence in what I do, but at the same time, it can be my weakness as well. I do need to be a little bit more receiving of some information. We [brothers] all kind of have our own special talents. He [middle brother] has helped mold me and reminds me that, as Head Coach, I have to get out more and talk to more folks. There’s a lot of social events to go to so he’s helped me from that standpoint. The youngest one, he was not fortunate enough to have the same abilities athletically as my [middle] brother and I, but probably loved it and wanted it more than any of us. I actually use him in a lot of my speeches when I talk to the guys about how privileged they really are to have the ability to actually be able to physically come out here, how many people want to be in their shoes to be able to do this, to be allowed to do this that are not allowed to or don’t have the physical ability like my little brother. He had six knee surgeries [and] four arm surgeries, so you know, don’t take advantage of it, don’t waste a day that you get because you never know what day will be your last day. Post child, I think it’s safe to say that little man [montioning to his son] motivates everything. You want to give your child the world and whatever they want to do, you want to be able to give them the opportunity to achieve that. I feel like if you have a child, you might leave work an hour early and so you do. My wife knows how to get me home. She sends me a picture of little man and I drop whatever I’m doing and say “Hey, it’s time to go home, and we can deal with this tomorrow.” You make time to make sure that you’re still successful and your ambitions grow because you want to do whatever you can for little man. 

     

    TLR: How did you come to be at Southeastern? 

    MR: I was very fortunate. You know, when I was looking around to try to get into coaching, I made that decision late. I was studying for the MCAT in the summer and I was coaching a little high school team and started to meet with some coaches: coach Jones at Tulane, who I played for, Artigues was here at Southeastern. I talked to some other coaches that were in the business, but fortunately when I talked to Artigues, I was actually trying to apply for another job and asked him if he’d call on my behalf and be a reference for me, and he told me to wait a week. He said he might have something happening here opening up and a week later, it did. His volunteer spot came open, and I took the position thinking it would be a one-year job or two-year job and I would move on to the next to better my career, and slowly but surely, we’ve kept moving up every year. After one year, I was a second assistant, then after two more years, I was a top assistant and after six years, up to Head Baseball Coach. 

     

    TLR: I heard the team was selected as the pick to win the championship this year. If that’s true, how do you feel about it? 

    MR: Yep, [we are] preseason number one. It’s a great recognition to have. We talk about it. It’s a great honor to have. It’s the amount of respect that we’ve built year in and year out in this program. There’s obviously holes we [have] got to fill from last year, replacing [previous pitchers] Tate Scioneaux and Jake Johnson on the weekend rotation, [previous senior infielders] Brett Hoffman, Kevin Karr, Jacob Williams and [previous senior pitcher] Kyle Keller, who’s a draft pick. We didn’t lose a lot, but we did lose some big, key pieces to that, but when you do it right, these are expectations we have year in and year out, so it’s an honor to have it, but at the end of the day, this was a selection of respect, so to speak. Nothing has been accomplished yet. There’s still a lot of work to go do and to prove what a lot of people believe which is that we should repeat as a champion. 

     

    TLR: How will the team be different this season? New players? 

    MR: Last year, we relied heavily on our starting pitching. Our starting rotation was the first time where the same starters started every weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. It’s going to be a little different this year. Pitching will be different. We’re not going to rely so much on starting pitching as much. Offensively, we’ve led league the last two years in hitting and runs scored, but this is probably the most potent offense we’ve had to date. It’s going to be a mixture of power, speed [and] athleticism that we’ve never had before. You’re going to see a lot of new faces. You’ll see a lot of familiar faces, but there’s going to be a lot of guys and lot of roles to fill and we’re going to play the hot hand. There’s probably 14 or 15 guys that deserve in the lineup, but there’s only nine positions out there to be, so the guys can’t get selfish; I think that’s going to be our biggest thing this year. They [have] got to understand that they [have] got to do whatever to help us win another championship and multiple championships this year. That’s our overall team aspiration. 

     
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