Veteran Coaching Staff Returns to Newport Gulls for 2015

The Newport Gulls, fresh off the franchise’s league-record sixth NECBL championship, will have Manager Mike Coombs back at the helm for an 11th season in 2015, the club’s front office announced this week.

“I always feel privileged to come back and be one of the Newport Gulls,” Coombs said. “I love the City by the Sea. I love the organization, all the people affiliated with the organization, and this great league. I just love being a part of it.”

Coombs will be assisted by Pitching Coach Kevin Long, who joins the Coombs staff for a fifth consecutive season since 2011, and fourth-year Hitting Coach Al Leyva, who took last summer off after serving under Coombs for three seasons from 2011-2013.

“The Newport Gulls organization, our players, our fans and our community are very fortunate to have such a professional, dedicated and experienced staff to coach our club both on and off the field,” said General Manager Chuck Paiva. “These three gentlemen represent everything that is good in summer college baseball, and I cannot imagine a better staff anywhere in the country.”

Coombs, who following the 2014 campaign owns a 281-138 regular season record, in addition to a 42-14 postseason record (323-152 overall), has guided the Gulls to four of the team’s six NECBL titles, including his first season with the team, 2005. Under Coombs, the Gulls dominated the NECBL again in both 2009 and 2012, setting numerous team and league records en route to titles. Coombs-led teams have likewise won playoff division titles seven times (2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013 and 2014), and the 2006 squad owns a still-standing NECBL record for most wins in the regular season (32-10).

After a decade-long NECBL coaching career with so many accolades, there was some speculation that the 2014 season was to be the last for Coombs.

“I told (Paiva) last year, ‘10 (years)?’ And he goes, ‘OK, 10,’” Coombs told The Newport Daily News after August’s championship celebration. “…I should be done; I should be on my Harley, riding off into the sunset… But Chuck and I will talk.”

And they did – Coombs is back for more.

The Coombs-Long-Leyva combination will enter its fourth iteration in 2015, as the trio look to accomplish perhaps the one thing Coombs hasn’t yet during his tenure – a championship repeat. While Coombs has hoisted the Fay Vincent Sr. Cup four times, the Gulls last won back-to-back titles in 2001 and 2002, although Coombs-led teams finished as runners-up in 2007, 2008, and 2013.

Coombs, who typically shrugs off any praise for the franchise’s repeated successes during his tenure, is always quick to credit his players – and assistant coaches – for what the Gulls organization has accomplished on the field.

“Kevin and Al really go the extra mile for these kids,” Coombs said. “I fully trust what Al is doing with our hitters and what Kevin is doing with our pitchers.”

Leyva, the head coach of Damien High School’s baseball program in California, has six years of service time as a manager or assistant coach with three other NECBL organizations, including the North Adams SteepleCats, and the former Manchester Silkworms and Middletown Giants organizations. He’s coached professionally with the Chicago White Sox organization, and his brother, Nick, is third base coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Long, meanwhile, a retired Miami police detective, has been pitching coach of the Miami Dade College Sharks since 2003, and helped guide the team to a runner-up finish in the JUCO World Series in 2014 before arriving just in time for the start of the Gulls season. He’s also served as pitching coach for the NECBL’s Danbury Westerners and the Cape Cod Baseball League’s Wareham Gatemen.

Coombs is a two-time NECBL Manager of the Year, including 2006, when his team won an NECBL-record 32 regular season games and set numerous high marks (including a league-record 2.03 team ERA), and 2009, when he won his second of now four titles as the Gulls skipper. He’s managed six NECBL All-Star Games, and dozens of his players have gone on to sign professional contracts – including several Major Leaguers. His 2012 team was named the No. 1 summer collegiate team nationally by Perfect Game USA.

A former player in the Detroit Tigers organization and Minor League coach in the Milwaukee Brewers organization, Coombs was also a pitching coach for the University of South Florida, and played for Seminole Community College and the Shenandoah Valley Collegiate League.

Coombs, a Florida native, said he has always enjoyed trekking north for the summer – and between coaching at historic Cardines Field, managing some of the most talented collegiate athletes in the country, and the Gulls being the perennial recipient of tremendous support from fans and the City of Newport, it’s no wonder he decided to come back for an 11th summer.

“The way people treat me in Newport is wonderful,” Coombs said. “I couldn’t ask for a better second home than Newport. I love coming back for that reason. The baseball is great, the players and coaches are great. Being a part of the Newport Gulls family is something special.”

The Newport Gulls, members of the 12-team New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL), are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, founded as the Rhode Island Gulls in 1998 in Cranston, R.I., before moving to Newport in 2001. In addition to recruiting, fielding, and developing a team of the nation’s top collegiate baseball athletes and attracting 50,000 fans annually to Cardines Field, the predominantly volunteer organization strives to benefit the youth of Newport County via summer camps, reading programs, fundraisers, scholarships, and charitable donations – totaling nearly $1 million since 2001. The Gulls are six-time champions of the NECBL – the winningest franchise in league history – and were ranked as the overall No. 1 summer collegiate baseball team in the country by Perfect Game USA in 2012.

For more information about the Newport Gulls, visit facebook.com/newportgulls, follow the Gulls on Twitter @NewportGulls or visit www.newportgulls.com.