Andy Stankiewicz

Andrew Neal Stankiewicz (born August 10, 1964) is the head coach of the USC Trojans baseball team in Los Angeles and is a former Major League Baseball middle-infielder.

Stankiewicz had a seven-year MLB playing career spanning four clubs and 429 appearances.

Stankiewicz also played football where he was a Los Angeles Times First Team All-Southeast wide receiver as a senior in 1981, catching 53 passes and returning four kicks for touchdowns.

His coach classified him as "the fastest player in the league."

He hit .438 and was the Swordsmen's everyday shortstop as a senior in 1982.

He played in the state's Shrine All-Star Football classic at the Rose Bowl in July 1982.

Stankiewicz received football interest from Northern Arizona.

In July 1982, Stankiewicz received a full baseball scholarship to Pepperdine.

He originally held partial scholarship offers from Pepperdine and UC Irvine but signed with the Waves when head coach Dave Gorrie upped his offer to a full scholarship.

Stankiewicz appeared in 32 games as a freshman in 1983, hitting .208 with five RBIs.

He became an everyday starter as a sophomore in 1984, playing all but two games in his final three seasons combined.

His loudest offensive numbers came as a sophomore, hitting .306 with a team-leading 11 home runs, a team-best 63 runs scored and 74 hits.

He rounded out his career hitting .278 as a junior and .288 as a senior.

For his career, he played in 221 games, recorded 215 hits, 20 home runs, 172 runs scored, 96 RBIs and a .285 batting average.

Stankiewicz wore No. 3 as a Wave and earned second-team all-conference honors as a sophomore and a senior.

The Waves qualified for the NCAA tournament in his junior and senior seasons.

In the 1985 Stanford Regional, Pepperdine lost its opener to Nebraska before bouncing back to win three straight games against Oregon State, Nebraska and Stanford.

The Waves fell in the winner-take-all regional championship to Stanford.

Alongside his brother, Alan, Stankiewicz played collegiate summer ball in 1985 for the North Pole Nicks under legendary coach Mike Gillespie.

Both Andy and Alan earned National Baseball Congress All-American honors.

Stankiewicz was selected in three MLB drafts.

In 11 seasons in the minor leagues, he played primarily shortstop and second base.

He was drafted by the New York Yankees in the 1986 draft and went on to make his MLB debut with the club in 1992.

He is an alumnus of Pepperdine University, where he was a standout for the Waves baseball program and graduated in 1986 with a degree in sociology.

He ranks in the top 10 in several Pepperdine career batting categories, and is third on the school's all-time list in stolen bases (101).

Stankiewicz was an all-league player and his team's most valuable player in football, basketball and baseball at St. Paul High School.

He was "regarded as 'one of the best athletes in the history of the school.' His credentials were impressive, not in one sport, but three."

In the 1986 Austin Regional, Pepperdine won games against Texas–Pan American and Southern Illinois before losing to Arizona.

The Waves staved off elimination by beating host Texas but fell again to Arizona.

Stankiewicz finished 6–4 in the NCAA tournament in his Waves career.

Stankiewicz remains in Pepperdine's career top 10 for at bats with 755, runs with 172, walks drawn with 121, stolen bases with 101 and stolen-base percentage at .828.

While at Pepperdine, Stankiewicz played alongside other future MLB players in Paul Faries, Mike Fetters, Matt Howard, Chad Kreuter and Doug Simons as well as current Pepperdine head coach Rick Hirtensteiner.

In 1987 he hit .307 at Ft. Lauderdale, and in 1989 he stole 41 bases in 498 at bats at Albany.

He also played for the Houston Astros and Montreal Expos before closing out his career with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 1998.

Following his playing career, Stankiewicz worked in the Yankees organization including serving as the manager of the Staten Island Yankees in 2003 and 2005, a roving infield instructor in 2004, and as a scout in 2006.

He led Staten Island, the Yankees' Class A affiliate, to the 2005 NY-Penn League Championship.

He got his first taste of college coaching with a three-year stint as an assistant coach at Arizona State under Pat Murphy, making a pair of College World Series appearances in 2007 and 2009.

Stankiewicz also served as the minor league field coordinator for the Seattle Mariners from 2009 to 2012 before taking the head coaching job at Grand Canyon.

In an 11-year stint as the head coach at Grand Canyon, he inherited an NCAA Division II program and guided it through a transition to Division I where it stood as one of the nation's top mid-major programs with five Western Athletic Conference regular-season championships and multiple appearances in the nation's top-25 rankings.

Stankiewicz went to St. Paul High School in Santa Fe Springs, California.