Baseball New Zealand is thrilled to be able to announce the Head Coaching roles for the National U15 and U12 Teams to lead these national programmes over the next development cycle.

Marty Grant, National U15 Manager will bring his wealth of experience, passion and dedication to lead the National U15 Team.  This will be Marty’s first opportunity to take the reins of a national team, but he is no stranger to our community and national programmes, also being the hitting coach for the National U18 Team.

Marty brings a passion and desire to develop the next generation of baseballers here in NZ.  He was instrumental in building and leading the National U18 team to a historical win over their Australian counter parts in the WBSC Oceania U18 Qualifier in December 2022.  Marty is courageous and passionate about baseball and player development, he has first-hand knowledge of what it takes to be a high performance player, as a member of the World Champion Blacksox team in the late 90s and early 2000’s.  Marty is a great fit to lead our National U15 Team, with a desire to prepare and develop players to reach their full potential whilst building a strong team unit focused on achieving their goals.

Andrew Marck, National U12 Manager steps into this role with a focus on building baseball players with strong fundamental baseball skills and game sense to provide a solid platform for growth, development, enjoyment and success both short term and long term in the game of baseball.  Andrew Marck brings his lifetime love of baseball, his experience in coaching junior and youth players, his experiences as a professional ABL baseball player and a strong desire to achieve and succeed.  Andrew is a dedicated coach who understands both the youth players needs and the necessary components to be a successful team.  Andrew is a familiar face in baseball, he is a current and longer serving member of the NZ Men’s National Diamondblacks team that recently

competed at the World Baseball Classic, an ABL, Auckland Tuatara Player and serves multiple coaching roles with the Howick Hawkes.

Baseball New Zealand’s CEO Meg Crockett believes, “with such great coaching expertise entering our pathways programmes at the youth level we will be on track to rebuild our national programmes and strengthen our baseball development leading to outstanding performances on the word stage. 

Baseball NZ needs to build our player base for future years and to focus on long term athlete development, feeding into our upper tier national programmes in due course.  With this in mind, we have been lucky to recruit two excellent Managers in Marty Grant and Andrew Marck to drive our National U15 and U12 programs ahead for the next cycle.”

Both Marty and Andrew are currently working with Baseball NZ’s National Coach Appointment Panel to complete their coaching and management units.  Andrew has the added pressure of selecting and building a competitive National U12 team that will head to the WBSC U12 World Cup in July this year.

Article added: Monday 20 February 2023