Sept. 1, 2002
David Grewe has joined the Notre Dame baseball program as an assistant coach, after serving in similar capacities at Central Michigan University and the University of Chicago. Grewe will serve as the program’s recruiting coordinator and will work specifically with the Notre Dame catchers and outfielders on defense while also assisting head coach Paul Mainieri with hitting instruction.
Grewe’s duties as recruiting coordinator also will allow associate head coach Brian O’Connor to devote more time to his duties as the Irish pitching coach while still remaining heavily involved in the program’s highly-successful recruiting effort.
“David came highly recommended by some people who I hold in high regard and I have know him for a few years, as an assistant coach in the Midwest and an instructor at our baseball camps,” said ninth-year Notre Dame head coach Paul Mainieri.
“He provides our program with a great deal of experience in the area of recruiting. I also am excited for David to work with our corps of young and inexperienced catchers, which includes freshman Cody Rizzo, Jay Molina (who missed all of his freshman year due to injury), sophomore Brent Weiss and junior Javier Sanchez, who will making the transition behind the plate after playing in the infield. Often times you have a veteran catcher to guide those players but we lost Paul O’Toole and Andrew Bushey to graduation – thus David’s expertise at that position will prove to be a tremendous asset to our program in 2003.”
Grewe spent the 2001 and ’02 seasons as the hitting and infielders/catchers coach at Central Michigan. The Chippewas set the team scoring record in 2001 while also posting the second-most hits and third-most home runs in the history of a CMU program that owns the Midwest’s best winning percentage since 1970. He also tutored a 2001 group of infielders that set the CMU record for double plays in a season.
Grewe – who coached five CMU players that went on to professional baseball – also served as the director of Central Michigan’s popular winter baseball camps and clinics.
He spent the previous two seasons (1999 and 2000) as an assistant coach at the University of Chicago, with the 2000 Maroons squad ranking 19th in the nation for season batting average and setting six teams records (including batting average, slugging percentage and walks).
Grewe also served as an intern and then an administrative assistant with the American Baseball Coaches Association (beginning in Dec., 2001), with his responsibilities including web-page maintenance. He was an assistant coach with the summer-league Motor City Pride Baseball Club in 1996, with the team posting a 29-7 record while seeing 94 percent of its players go on to play professional baseball.
In additional to gaining experience as an instructor at summer baseball camps held at Notre Dame, Tulane, Mississippi State and LSU, Grewe has served as a personal hitting instructor for players on various youth levels. He was an account executive with Sports Marketing Group during the summer of 1998, selling hospitality packages for major sporting events to Fortune 500 executives.
Grewe earned three varsity baseball letters at the University of Dayton from 1995-98, playing as a third baseman, first baseman and catcher. He started at third base on the 1996 team that set the Dayton record for wins in a season (including an upset of eventual NCAA champion LSU) before helping the 1998 Flyers squad post the program’s first winning season since 1979, batting .324 while ranking among the team’s top five of 11 statistical categories in ’98.
He graduated from Dayton in 1998 as a sports management major, with a minor in public relations, and is close to completing his master’s degree in athletic administration at Central Michigan.
Grewe was a three-sport prep athlete at the University of Detroit Jesuit High School, earning three letters in both baseball and golf and two in basketball.