How Josh Elander helped turn Tennessee baseball around

Elander, with his wife Brittany sitting next to him reading a book, has sold the vision of Tennessee’s baseball program under Tony Vitello to hundreds of recruits. Yet it hasn’t always been as simple a process as his evening may sound.

Vitello hired Elander in August of 2017 after spending one season as a volunteer assistant coach at Arkansas. Elander had played for Vitello at TCU in 2011 and 2012, and was now set to work for him as an assistant coach on Vitello’s first-ever coaching staff.

“I was just really excited to have the opportunity to continue working for Tony,” Elander said. “Him and I go way back. When I was in college, every Thursday night, we’d get our work in, in the cage. He was always available. He’s a guy that locked it in for me how I wanted to be as a coach. He helped me get to Arkansas and then him giving me this opportunity, I was incredibly excited. At the same time, there was a big sense of ‘I’ve got a lot of work to do’ because this guy put his neck on the line for me and now it’s time to pay the toll.”

Vitello hired Elander to many roles, but his most important role was serving as the team’s recruiting coordinator.

The newly-minted assistant was tasked with leading the charge in recruiting for a program that was an afterthought in the most talent-rich conference there is in college baseball.

Still, Elander had optimism about the vision that could be sold because of what he remembered about playing in Knoxville as an opponent.

“The first thing we noticed was how beautiful of a place it is,” Elander said. “Driving down Neyland Drive by the river, I knew there was a lot of potential. And I knew if Tony Vitello was the head coach, there would be good days ahead.”

Elander was confident in the vision that could be sold, but that didn’t make it any easier of a task. He still had to get recruits on the phone, and then get them to campus.

“There were some guys on the road during our first summer who we asked to call and they wouldn’t,” Elander said. “We just stayed the course and went for guys that are athletic and can do a lot of different things. We weren’t afraid to be told no and leaned on the relationships we had in recruiting. Then it started turning for the better. I thought once we got guys to campus and let them get around Knoxville and be around Coach Vitello and Coach (Frank) Anderson, that they would see it was a hidden gem in the league.”

Not only was Elander a paid assistant for the first time in his young coaching career, but Vitello was a head coach for the first time.

Vitello was hired by Tennessee after four seasons as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Arkansas, the same role he hired Elander to fill in Knoxville.

Becoming a head coach is so much more than simply coaching baseball and Elander helped relieve Vitello of the day-to-day stress that comes along with being the head coach, yet alone for the first time.

“Everyone knows there’s someone behind the scenes that is doing a lot of the work, but isn’t getting a lot of the credit,” Vitello said of Elander. “He’s been that piece.

“If we showed up to work and he was on vacation, we would all be lost as far as where we’re at with our 11.7 (scholarship distribution), who are the guys we’re talking to this week, what games are we going to go watch. The biggest thing is that he allows me to tune into the details or responsibilities that I have to do. It also allows Frank (Anderson) to just work with the pitchers. He’s got the most important thing to every athletic program has going on and that’s recruiting. He’s got it locked up and he’s certainly involved us because we want to have relationships with all of our players, but again, that means, what games do we need to go to, who do we need to talk to on the phone, building relationships with coaches, building relationships with kids and some of these kids are literally 14 or 15 years old, so not only is it more time-consuming than it was back in the day, but it’s an even bigger challenge because you have all of these recruiting classes you’re trying to juggle at once.”

It’s not just the many recruiting classes Elander is juggling. He coaches Tennessee’s catchers, is the hitting coach and is the third base coach.

“He’s doing three pretty big baseball duties there that everybody kind of sees on the surface,” Vitello said. “The amount of time he spends away from his family or on the phone late at night and how much stress relief he provides for the rest of our staff because of how strong he is in that role is immense.”

Since Elander’s arrival, Tennessee has sign four top-15 recruiting classes according to Perfect Game. The Vols brought in the fifth-ranked class in 2018, the seventh-ranked class in 2019, the 11th-ranked class in 2020 and the sixth-ranked class for 2021.

Tennessee has won several games along the way as a result of Elander’s recruiting efforts. The Vols have won back-to-back SEC East division titles and enter the 2022 SEC Baseball Tournament as the SEC regular-season champs for the first time since 1995.

More importantly, UT is a year removed from its first appearance at the College World Series since 2005, an accomplishment that Elander says has been a game-changer for recruiting efforts.

“The credit goes to the players,” Elander said. “The way they’ve played has made this place a program what I think can be the premier destination in all of college baseball. I don’t want to say that it’s easier to recruit now because it’s never going to be easy to recruit in the SEC, but I just think we’re a more visible program because of what Tony (Vitello) has done here. He’s put us in a good position to where we can play with any recruit coast-to-coast.

“Guys I talk to in recruiting are always watching the live streams on the ESPN app, but now they can see where we were five years ago, and where we are now. We’ve started winning at a really high level, we’re developing and having guys go in the first round with more coming, so hopefully they see they can win here, they can develop here and they can have fun. You can accomplish anything you want on the baseball field, but also be set up for the rest of your life with a Volunteer degree.”

It’s no secret that Elander is well on his way to being a head coach himself as he has established himself as one of the top assistant coaches in all of college baseball.

Elander got a taste of being a head coach earlier this season when Vitello was suspended four-games for bumping into an umpire. Elander promptly led the Vols to a perfect 4-0 record in the four games that Vitello missed.

“He’s going to be phenomenal at it because the one thing you have to do is — and I fight this battle all the time — you have to be even keel and under control,” Vitello said. “He played with fire, but he was able to control it. And as a coach, he’s rather stoic with his body language. The guy is a calming influence in our dugout which when we were first started, you’ve got Frank (Anderson), Ross Kivett and myself. If we don’t have that, who knows what might happen, the whole place might burn down.

“He’s skilled and he’s worked at so many parts of the game. He turned himself into a great defensive catcher. He was our biggest grinder in the cage when I coached him and he’s taken the time to learn the nuanced details of recruiting. His presence, mentality and who he is as a person is actually going to trump a really strong skillset and make him the head coach that he will eventually be.”

Elander has helped Vitello build Tennessee’s baseball program into one of the premier college baseball destinations.

The Vols have accomplished just about everything it possibly can over the regular season the past two years. Now it’s about getting back to Omaha and trying to bring home to Knoxville the program’s first National Championship, a feat they’re well in position to do over the next month.