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Liam Bowen ’06
Liam Bowen ’06, Head Baseball Coach at UMBC, stands in the dugout wearing a black and yellow team sweatshirt and baseball cap, intently watching the game.
Liam Bowen ’06, Head Baseball Coach at UMBC, stands in the dugout wearing a black and yellow team sweatshirt and baseball cap, intently watching the game.
I wouldn’t be a baseball coach if I hadn’t been a history major at Macalester.
Liam Bowen ’06

History Major
Head Baseball Coach, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Coaching • Communication • Student athlete

I come from a family that was serious about education, but I remember going to college and feeling unsophisticated compared to guys who spent summers abroad while I worked in a grocery store. My classes at Macalester quickly showed me that working hard, showing up on time, and all the other good habits I’d developed as a lifelong athlete, were also academic skills.

I am where I am because of classes I took at Mac with brilliant professors who made me think, write, and study the best way to land a message in different rhetorical situations. I’ve found so much overlap between my college classes and what I do now. My history major taught me how to communicate, when to be direct, and how to make a compelling case to different audiences. Now I spend all day trying to create relationships with players in which we’re invested with each other for lasting impact. Coaching is all communication. I wouldn’t be a baseball coach if I hadn’t been a history major at Macalester.

Playing baseball at Mac reminded me that succeeding at sports is about embracing being a beginner—over and over again, at every new level of play. I’ve worked my way up to a Head Coach position from my first baseball-related job out of Mac: as a part-time pitching coach at St. Mary’s Maryland, where I earned $1000 a season. I eventually became a full-time pitching coach, then an assistant coach, and now a head coach. That job is more varied than you might think. I focus on players’ athletic and personal development, of course, but also fundraising and budgets, alumni relations, strategic elements of game planning, recruitment, and more. At each new level, just like as a player, I’ve had to learn new skills.

If I could tell my former self one thing, it would be what I tell my players all the time: in college, you are building skills—not just on the ballfield—that will end up making you successful in interesting ways you can’t even imagine now.

Last updated: October 2025