O’Sullivan not taking latest Omaha trip for granted

OMAHA, Nebraska — Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan has been taking a great deal of ribbing lately for his seemingly never-ending stoic demeanor in the dugout.

But as he watched the Gators go through the practice paces Thursday prior to Friday’s 7 p.m. ET Men’s College World Series opener at Charles Schwab Field Omaha, he was smiling and plenty animated as he greeted MCWS officials and others he hadn’t seen in way too long.

O’Sullivan said showing those emotions were natural for him because of obvious reasons. After getting the Gators to the MCWS a remarkable seven times between 2010 and 2018, and winning the national championship in 2017, Florida went five years before making this year’s latest return trip.

“I think from my perspective, it’s good to have the program back and have this opportunity, but it’s — you kind of get spoiled,” O’Sullivan said. “My kids thought that this was vacation every year. And then there’s a three- or four-year layoff, and you start realizing how difficult it is.

“I think it’s human nature. Even I can admit it myself. I took it for granted that this was expected every year, and all of a sudden that’s taken away from you for three or four years or whatever, and then you kind of appreciate it a little bit more.”

Along the way this year, Florida posted a 50-15 record overall and went 20-10 in the grueling Southeastern Conference, eventually sharing the regular-season championship with Arkansas. 

“We’ve earned our way here,” O’Sullivan said. “It’s been a very interesting ride throughout the year. Going through the SEC slate has been difficult at times, but we’re just excited to be here. It’s been a while since we’ve been here. It’s been since 2018. I’ve been reminded over and over about that. It’s good to see a lot of familiar faces that I haven’t seen in a while.”

O’Sullivan said he is reminded all the time about how hard it is to win consistently in the SEC and then carry that momentum over in the postseason all the way to Omaha. But he added that staying true to the process you believe in as a program is the key to establishing the consistency necessary to make league titles and runs at another national title possible.

“It is not just a group of good players that are talented, but it’s the players that have to come together, stay healthy, play right at the right time,” O’ Sullivan said. “You have to have the right culture to do this thing over and over. It’s not easy.”

Shortstop Josh Rivera credits O’Sullivan and the Florida coaching staff for creating and maintaining the correct culture.

“The coaches do a tremendous job of creating that culture, that winning culture, and having that mentality to really wrap yourself in the team. That’s kind of just been the biggest thing,” Rivera said. “No matter what the internal changes have been, we’ve always just reiterated that point of emphasis, and that’s just to wrap yourself around the team and play for each other because, you know, it’s funny they say this: ‘You can take a horse to the water, but you can’t make them drink it.’

“They give us all the tools that they need to be successful, but it’s really up to us to play for each other and really mold that mindset of winning and playing together on a daily basis in order to make it back to here. “So yeah, the coaches do a tremendous job of making that culture. … Recruiting guys that are good team guys and good guys to be around and really buy into that mindset is a big team key for us.”

O’Sullivan owns a career record of 677-317 in 16 years at the helm of the Florida program and became the school’s all-time winningest coach in 2021, surpassing a record that had stood for 45 years. But this was his first head-coaching position after nine years as an assistant at Clemson when he took the job in 2007, and he says arriving at the winning culture required to make it all the way to Omaha has been neither easy nor laid out for him in some sort of magical blueprint.

“No one gives you a handbook that says here’s how do you this thing. I was never a head coach before. … Obviously there’s some growing pains there,” he said. “You learn. How do you learn? You learn by making mistakes, and that’s one thing we preach to our players all the time. But the thing is you hopefully learn from your mistakes. I have a folder that I have kept and started in 2010 of mistakes that I thought I made personally, and I still have it. It’s in the hotel room, and I have added to it and subtracted each year that we’ve gone out here.

“Once again, when you get to Omaha for the first time in 2010 or ’11 and ’12 and when we went on that run in ’15, ’16, ’17, ’18, there’s no one that sits you down and says, ‘Okay, expect this or expect X, Y, and Z. This is how you need to handle your trip out to Omaha.’ You have to learn on the fly. I think our experiences by coming out a few times did help us in ’17.”

Now he’s hoping what he retained from that title run in 2017 and other previous trips to the MCWS might just help the Gators this time around.

But whatever happens, he’s going to savor the experience. So will his kids, who now are quite a bit older. Daughter Payton was a newborn when the family made its first road trip to Omaha and is now 22 years old. Son Finn was 5 when the Gators won it all in ’17 and is now bearing down on his 21st birthday.

“I think I was smart enough to recognize some of the mistakes that maybe I have made from my leadership role by coming out here early on, and you just learn from them,” O’Sullivan said. “But as far as my kids are concerned, yeah, it’s a lot of fun. Obviously I enjoyed it when they were so much younger, too. But now that they’re older, they kind of understand how cool it is. They’ve got friends coming in from Gainesville that will be out here as well. They were very, very excited about coming out here.

“I think before they were so young, they didn’t know. They just thought, ‘Yeah, we’re going to Omaha again, no big deal.’ Now I think they think it’s kind of cool.”

And obviously, so does he.