PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — John Yurkow is the head baseball coach at the University of Pennsylvania. Since taking over the program in 2013, he has had the Quakers near the top of the Ivy League standings on a consistent basis.
Yurkow grew up in South Jersey and played college baseball at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey. Even at a young age, you could see that coaching was in his future.
“We'd be playing outside in the neighborhood and I was the one kid that was probably the annoying one, that was always yelling at another 12-year-old,” said Yurkow.
Related
“ ‘That's not where you should be playing. You should be doing it this way.’ I feel like I was that type of personality. This guy that was making up teams, trying to make them as even as possible.”
Yurkow is already the third-winningest coach in Penn, and the 2022 Quakers set a program record with 33 victories. But Yurkow says there is still plenty of work to do.
“I'd like us to get to a point where people think in Northeast baseball that we're one of the teams to say, ’You know those guys in Philly? They can play. The Penn baseball program, they’re tough, man.’“
You can listen to Yurkow talk about the success he has had at the University of Pennsylvania by checking out the latest episode of “1-on-1 with Matt Leon” below.