The Long Beach State men’s baseball team entered 2024 during a transitional period for the coaching staff. Eric Valenzuela resigned as head coach with three years remaining on his contract but he returned to Saint Mary’s where he previously coached from 2014 to 2019.
The university did not take too long or look too far to find his replacement. Bryan Peters had been an assistant on Valenzuela’s staff that primarily focused on the offense. Now at the helm of the program, Peters said what it means to be a Dirtbag.
“The history, the tradition, all the success has gone from the past, hopefully into the present and our intention is to be able to lead it into the future,” Peters said.
Joining Peters’ staff are hitting coach Bryan Prince and pitching coach Jeff Opalewski. Prince was an assistant coach at Georgia Tech from 2008 to 2017. Opalewski spent two seasons at Miami University with previous experience at Central Michigan University and IMG Academy.
Kevin Suarez was hired by Peters as an offensive assistant and serves as the team’s first base coach. Jordan Aboites retained his previous role with the staff as the director of player development and operations under Valenzuela.
Projected to finish eighth in the Big West Preseason Coaches Poll, the Dirtbags are 5-1-1 after taking two of three games from the University of Washington and sweeping the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Game three of the series versus Washington resulted in a 17-inning stalemate.
The only loss on the season thus far came on Feb. 28 after UCLA erased a seven-run deficit to beat the Dirtbags 12-11 on a walk-off single in the 10th inning.
“I don’t talk about winning the Big West championship or going to a regional or going to Omaha because if we just start with winning every day, which includes practice and every game, that’s going to lead us to really good things,” Peters said.
Originally coined by former head coach Dave Snow, the nickname “the Dirtbags” refers to “the program’s style of play and success against higher profile programs,” according to a 2016 Beach Magazine article.
Snow laid the groundwork for rebuilding the program during the 1989 season. He led the team to a 50-15 record in his first season after they finished 14-45 the previous season under John Gonsalves.
The Dirtbags won their first conference title in nearly two decades at the time and made the College World Series for the first time in school history, going undefeated in their regional.
When they got to the College World Series, however, college baseball powerhouses University of Texas and Louisiana State University in the opening games of a double elimination bracket beat Long Beach State.
At the beginning of that season, the team lacked a singular home stadium as they played at Long Beach Community College, Cerritos Junior College and Blair Field. Many practices were held at Heartwell Park on all-dirt infields and players would return to the clubhouse covered in dirt, hence the nickname.
The nickname resurfaced during the 1993 season as Snow’s squad was three outs away from the National Championship Game before LSU sparked a three-run comeback. Long Beach defeated Kansas University and Texas A&M en route to the semifinals and established themselves as a mid-major powerhouse.
“A Dirtbag is a mentality,” Opalewski said. “It’s a code, it’s a set of standards where you just don’t care about what it takes. It takes what it takes, period.”
Albeit a small sample size of seven games, the Dirtbags’ pitching staff has held opponents to 3.34 runs per game compared to 4.41 in 2023. Sophomore starting pitcher Kellan Montgomery leads the team with a 0.75 earned run average and 12 strikeouts through 12 innings pitched.
“I can’t explain how much of an impact they’ve had, they’re so good at taking the best parts of each and every one of us and letting us run with it,” Montgomery said about the new coaching staff.
The staff is determined to bring the Dirtbags back to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2017 and to Omaha for the first time since 1998.
“This is one of the best places in all of America to play or coach college baseball; I’ve never changed my perspective of that,” Opalewski said.
“I love the fact that we don’t have the nicest things [compared to Power Five conference programs], but we can still achieve things on a national scale, by going back to that Dirtbag mentality.”