On this week’s episode of New England Lacrosse Journal’s “Chasing the Goal” podcast, hosts Kyle Devitte and Jack Piatelli welcomed Babson head coach Rocky Batty to the studio.
Batty is heading into his fourth year in charge of the men’s lacrosse program at Babson. He took over the program after serving as a volunteer assistant at Boston University for one year back in 2018. Prior to that, he coached at Wellesley High School and Brookline High School for two decades following his playing career at Brown.
Under Batty's leadership, Babson has become a powerhouse in the NEWMAC and made the NCAA tournament last year.
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Jack Piatelli: This is your fourth year getting into this position at Babson. How did you know what kind of player you were looking for to get the team to where you've gotten it very quickly in the last four years?
Rocky Batty: We've got a great tradition of academics, so we should be able to appeal to really high-end students, really driven students at the same time. When I looked at the fact that Babson is building a $60 million dollar facility for athletes, and I looked at the success of our hockey team, of our soccer teams and baseball and softball teams, and, frankly, the success of our lacrosse team.
We've been a goal away this year, a goal away another year, of winning games against huge opponents. We've had great games with among others in our conference with Springfield, right? Perhaps it's always right on the cusp. You know, I knew that was gonna be a great opportunity. In the end, the kids that I look at, that we look at, I think that the same that really anybody who's coaching high-level lacrosse looks at terrific athletes, guys who can think for themselves. Guys want to be at the school.
Kyle Devitte: This is the biggest roster I've ever seen at Babson. How did you go about the process of building that?
RB: The goal is not to have a roster this big. I think actually we're one of the schools that, in our recruiting conversations with families, we don't have an awful lot of good news for them. We're actively reducing our roster size. My target is to be at 44 to 45. I think it's manageable; it gives it an opportunity for playing time. Facilities can support that. But besides the point there, I think that when I came in, the previous staff had actually assembled terrific teams and had great guys in the pipeline. So, let's be honest, part of what I've done is taken advantage of some really good players, some really good students, on campus.
I think that there were some numbers issues. I want to say the first year I was there, there were six graduating in our senior class. The next year there were 14 or 15 or 16 and the classes were lopsided that way. And they were going to stay lopsided. And when I looked at the numbers and said, "Let's try and get 10 years out and make a plan here."
I think that we understood if we had recruited six and then 15 and then four and then 19, we're just chasing our tail all the time. So, to get around that, we brought in two bigger classes so we could even out offense-defense, just positionally have a plan for who we're going to be recruiting in three years, in five years and seven years, and then 10 years.
I think we have traveled differently for recruiting. Babson has always had a national appeal. But ... I was in Seattle three weeks ago. I've been to the West Coast two more times since then. My assistant's been up and down the Mid-Atlantic and the East Coast. We do a lot of traveling. We work hard to find guys, but in not only our efforts, but I think the college's efforts to just really build a terrific school with an international reputation. We are getting inquiries from some guys we haven't maybe previously heard from. And it's because I think we're happy to say we're one of the best schools at what we do in lacrosse.
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