For Moose Jaw Miller Express head coach Eric Marriott, the timing couldn’t have turned out better.
Marriott, 24, was originally planning to return to the team as an assistant coach for the 2020 WCBL campaign under then-bench boss Rich Sorensen, having played centrefield for the Express the previous two seasons.
But Sorensen notified the club in the spring that he wouldn’t be able to return to the team, and just like that, Marriott was the new head coach of the Miller Express.
“(General manager) Cory (Olafson) called me up and said ‘you’re our guy’, so I would have been the head coach last year, but with COVID and everything they just didn’t announce anything,” Marriott said from his home in Niagara Falls, Ont. on Saturday afternoon. “So it’s been a year that I’ve been working on recruiting and everything, it’s just been under wraps until it was all official last week.”
It was a whirlwind couple of months leading up to officially taking over the team, and Marriott had to make a few decisions before officially committing to returning for what would have been the 2020 WCBL season.
“I was mulling my options, I had a couple pro offers overseas, but I ultimately wanted to have a career in coaching down the line, so I came to the conclusion that I wanted to take the next step,” he said of the initial offer. “So I said ‘yeah’ right away.”
From there, it was quickly to work -- the aforementioned recruiting has gone extremely well, and Marriott expects to have a team that will have fans plenty interested in hanging around the confines of Ross Wells Park this summer.
“I’m excited about our roster, we’re going to be talented,” Marriott said. “I think fans are going to be excited about some of the guys we’re bringing in and we’re going to be loaded from top to bottom.
“We’ve had an overwhelming amount of recruitment done by myself and Cory and our assistant coach, but we’ve had a bunch of coaches reach out to us, too, because players are itching to get out and just play… it’s worked out really well for us. Now we can start putting together progression lines for players as their season starts up in the next couple months here, we can see how they progress throughout the spring.”
Marriott aims to create a college-style program where players will find a regular routine focussed on improvement and being able to compete at a high level on a daily basis. That’s a key factor in the WCBL, which plays a MLB-style schedule with 56 games in a little over two months.
And when it comes to the overall atmosphere around the team, under no circumstances will the Express be a soft touch
“There are going to be no days off, teams aren’t going to come in here and think ‘oh, we’re playing the MIllers, this is an easy game’,” Marriott said. “I want them to be thinking they’re on the road and this is going to be a tough ballpark to play in.”
It’s all with a focus toward rewarding fans with a winning program -- and giving back to a community he has grown to love.
“I spent two summers there as a player and I was up there last summer, I wouldn’t have taken the job if it wasn’t somewhere I enjoyed,” Marriott said. “My billett family (Glenn and Joan Haug), I consider them family even today. I talk to them at least once a month and they were a huge part of me falling in love in Moose Jaw because they were so supportive of my career when I was a kid coming in three years ago.
“Then the support from guys like Cory, he’s had by back from the minute I flew in as junior in college right to today.”
Marriott also gave a shoutout to former Express head coach Michael Hunt, who now serves on the team’s board of directors.
“He has been a huge backbone for me through it all,” said Marriott. “He reached out a while ago to let me know he was proud of me as a player and had faith in me as a coach. We talk pretty consistently and he’s been great for me as well.”
Marriott’s girlfriend also hails from Moose Jaw, and they plan to return to Friendly City at the end of April or beginning of May in order to get settled in before the May 28 opening day against Medicine Hat.
“I’m looking forward to it all and seeing everyone again and having a really great season,” Marriott said.
