Welcome to two new coaches
Women’s golf coach A.J. Newell is back home
Tampa native A.J. Newell has come home, and that enhances everything she loves about her job as a golf coach: her enthusiasm for the game, her passion for developing and teaching young players, and the competitiveness she displays while building something meaningful.
“Being home means everything to me,” says Newell, who grew up in Tampa and largely taught herself how to play at the par-3 Countryway Golf Club near Town ‘n’ Country.
“I have a tremendous source of pride being from the Tampa Bay area and I look forward to sharing that with our up-and-coming recruits,” she says. “We’ll be recruiting heavily, hopefully from the state of Florida, to keep our top talent here at home.”
Newell comes to USF after three years as assistant coach at the University of Michigan, where she helped lead the Wolverines to the program’s first Big Ten Conference championship, three consecutive NCAA Regional appearances and the 2022 NCAA Championship Finals.
Newell was an All-State performer at St. Petersburg Northside Christian, an All-American at the University of Tennessee and played professionally for five seasons until a back injury that required surgery. Before entering collegiate coaching, Newell served as a golf professional at Pelican Golf Club in Belleair Beach, Florida, where she also ran a kids’ golf camp.
Baseball coach Mitch
Hannahs has a winning formula
When baseball coach Mitch Hannahs outlined his program-building plans after being introduced in June, a pattern quickly took shape. Everything he does has a purpose. And that purpose revolves around winning — on and off the field.
“If you don’t have the expectation of getting to Omaha (for the College World Series) and playing well in Omaha, you probably shouldn’t be coaching Division I baseball,’’ he says.
With USF’s location in a premier baseball state, Hannahs expects to recruit prime talent — “confident, independent, stubborn players.’’
“There are a lot of good players all over the country, but there aren’t a lot of players who are just tough, who want to win, who want to fight and (will do anything) to be successful,” he says.
That formula worked well at Hannahs’ previous stop, Indiana State University, his alma mater. He led the Sycamores to five NCAA Regionals, including four in the past five seasons, and six Missouri Valley Conference titles. His 2024 team reached No. 10 in the NCAA rating percentage index while being ranked in the top 25 for six straight weeks in all five national baseball polls. The Sycamores hosted an NCAA Regional and reached a Super Regional in 2023.
Overall, he has 620 wins as a head coach (with a .608 winning percentage), including a 355-214-1 (.624) mark in 11 seasons at Indiana State.
