ACU head baseball coach Britt Bonneau announced earlier this month that Elliot Cribby will be the new pitching coach for the Wildcats this upcoming season.
“I feel that as we move forward into Division I, it is really important for the program that we have a strong pitching coach to help out our guys,” Bonneau said.
“He is a high energy guy. He’s young, he wants to be a coach, and above all he wants to win. And anyone who knows anything about baseball knows how important your pitching is to win.”
Many factors went into the decision, but the main reason for the new addition to the staff was the recent move to Division I.
“He has had a lot of experience with Division I ball,” Bonneau said. “He’s played in it, coached in it, and he has a lot of contacts that can help us as a team as far as recruiting. It will improve our own team networking. Plus, as a team moving forward, you want to have guys with you that have had experience with Division I and have been around that.”
Bonneau hopes to improve on the team’s lack of success from a pitching stand point.
“I think myself, Coach Bonneau, and Coach Stover can all agree we really underachieved last season on the mound,” pitching Coach Elliot Cribby said.
“I’m excited because I feel like I have received the keys to a Ferrari. It’s a talented group of arms and we will bring an up-tempo and aggressive approach to our game plan every day.”
Before coming to ACU, Coach Cribby experienced success as both a player and a coach.
“I played at the University of Washington and established myself as a premier closer in the PAC-12 while I was there,” Cribby said.
“I actually closed games for Tim Lincecum. Having experience in that conference and playing in the Cape Cod League in the summer really gave me a better understanding of what it takes to succeed.”
After finishing out his career as a player, Cribby decided to become a coach.
“I chose to coach in high school versus the junior college route because I wanted to have experience running a program of my own rather than being an assistant,” Cribby said.
“In the two years I was at Mount Si, we established ourselves as one of the premier high school programs in the country being ranked in the Top 25 multiple times.”
According to Bonneau, Cribby began to stand out from the other candidates toward the end of the process.
“At one point, we were looking at five guys including Elliot,” Bonneau said. “But after weeks of talking and really getting to know these guys and seeing what their true colors were, Elliot just stood out from among the rest. His passion for the game, his eagerness to win, his strong faith, and core values really made the decision easy for us.”
The Wildcat nation hopes that Cribby’s new energy will correlate into wins on the diamond and a rebirth of baseball here in Abilene.
“My goal is simple: win,” Cribby said. “We will prepare in the fall to do so and with the work ethic instilled, everything else will take care of itself. ACU deserves a trip back to the College World Series and our goals fall nothing short of that.”
