Cooper said it was bittersweet leaving Wright State, but the challenge of turning around the program at Penn State was the right move for him.
“This is a great place,” Cooper said. “(Athletic Director) Bob Grant and the administration here believed in me. They gave me a chance to be a head coach. Mike Cusack did, too. He was the AD who hired me.
“The players and the people that are here are special. I feel like we’ve done some really great things here. When you do that, you become attached to it. I’ll look back with a lot of great memories and fondness of Wright State. When I got the job here, my oldest son had just turned 1, and my other son was not even a year old yet. Those two guys have grown up quite a bit. It’s a tough place to leave.”
With Cooper leaving for Penn State, Wright State will also lose his wife Maureen, who is a senior associate athletic director and senior woman administrator.
“I love Rob Cooper and the Cooper family,” Grant said. “They’re a part of our family. They’re great personal friends. He was in a real unenviable position of following a legend. You don’t want to do that. Ron Nischwitz (Cooper’s predecessor) is one of the guys on the Mount Rushmore of Wright State athletics, and Rob had to follow him. He did an amazing job.”
Lovelady, like Cooper, is a graduate of the University of Miami. The Hurricanes won two national championships during Lovelady’s playing career. He was a senior captain and catcher in 2001 when they won the title.
Lovelady was on Cooper’s staff for all nine seasons he was the head coach, and Lovelady was the associate head coach for the last seven years.
Lovelady worked with pitchers and catchers for Wright State and was also the recruiting coordinator.
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