You go to a USA Baseball national team identification event. You play your best. You get noticed. You get invited to the chance of a lifetime: An opportunity to represent your country as a player on the USA Baseball national team.

That's the common path for a player.

But what about the coaches for the USA Baseball national teams? A coach cannot go 8-for-19 with three home runs over the course of a weekend tournament. So, what do they do? What is their path? How do you become a coach for USA Baseball?

It is a question we get asked a lot.

The answer: Honestly, there is no "path" for the best coaches in the country to carefully weave through, marking off accomplishments from a cultivated list in order to get closer to their coaching dreams. The answer is more complex than that. There are any number of ways someone with the right heart, attitude and abilities can end up wearing U-S-A across their chest and, hopefully, a gold medal around their neck.

For proof of this, look no further than the 2018 15U World Cup champion coaching staff. Four men with wildly different paths to our coaching ranks found themselves all sharing a medal stand in Panama.

The Career Coach: Pitching Coach Adam Moseley

Adam Moseley is the head baseball coach at Hoover High School (Hoover, Ala.). As of 2020 he has been leading a big-time high school baseball program for thirteen years, spending the last six at Hoover. But his path to becoming a decorated head coach was set much earlier in life.

A pitcher by trade, Adam played baseball at Birmingham Southern College. But the on-field opportunity wasn't the main factor that drew him to the NAIA school; it was a coach.

"I knew I wanted to coach when I was in high school," Adam remembered. "It actually affected where I went to college. I wanted to play for someone who really taught the game."

That someone was Coach Brian Shoop. Shoop built a program at Birmingham Southern, turning the small school into an NAIA national champion and eventually an NCAA Division I conference champion and NCAA tournament threat.

Moseley studied under Shoop both as a player and ex-player, returning to camps to help out his mentor. He wanted to one day build his own program into a winner the same way Shoop had.

"We talked coaching all the time," Adam remembered of his time as a collegiate player. "He has been a constant source for me."

After graduating from Birmingham Southern in 1998, Adam started coaching high school baseball while taking graduate school classes. After grad school he began teaching and kept coaching before he eventually got a call from his hometown school, Grissom High School.

Adam would join Grissom as an assistant coach for three years before he took over the program. He led the Tigers for eight years and took the school to new heights, reaching the Alabama state quarterfinals four times in five years and an overall record of 224-153.

In 2014, Adam was hired to be the new head coach at Hoover High School. That same year, he was contacted by then USA Baseball Director of Baseball Operations Brooks Webb.

Why was Adam Moseley on USA Baseball's radar? He was an up-and-coming coach with drive and passion for the game, he already owned a track record of success in a major high school setting and was vouched for by a current USA Baseball coach, David Sharp. He checked all the boxes.

Moseley's insight to USA Baseball came from his relationship with David Sharp, the head coach of another big-time Alabama baseball program: Huntsville High School (Huntsville, Ala.). Sharp had helped with several USA Baseball identification events for the 12U National Team and shared his experiences with Moseley, and also recommended the career coach to USA Baseball.

"Brooks Webb called me and asked if I was interested [in working with USA Baseball]," Moseley remembered. "And I said yes, but I'd be a whole lot more comfortable if the pitchers were 60 feet, six inches away from the plate and the base paths were 90 feet apart."

Luckily, Webb was calling to fill a need at the National Team Championships in Florida, specifically with the 14U and 17U tournaments. Adam admits his first experience at a USA Baseball event was "a little overwhelming" due to the pressure of helping select a national team and the 14-hour days in hot and humid southern Florida. But, once he got settled in, it was "non-stop watching good baseball and learning."

Even though he wasn't coaching, Adam was determined to work as hard as he could at this new opportunity. His goal was to provide the best information possible, and let his dedication and drive show through his work.

He loved it, but it wasn't coaching. And Adam Moseley is a coach. He had known that since he was in high school.

The following year, even though it wasn't coaching, Adam once again returned to the National Team Championships event in Florida to give his time and expertise to USA Baseball and young players from across the country. And it was then that he was asked to lend his services to the 14U National Team Development Program.

"I thought the National Team Development Program was the coolest thing ever," said Moseley. At the National Team Development Program he was back where he felt most at home, back on the field coaching some of the most talented kids in the country. This is where he belonged.

Being back on the field and spending time with these players was something Adam took to heart. "I was there to coach pitchers, but I was there to coach them about life as well," he said.

Adam continued to coach USA Baseball players about pitching and life and "The USA Way" at any event he was asked to attend. And in 2017 he was named head pitching coordinator for the 14U National Team Development Program.

"You look around at these players and you think, well they are going to win a world championship next year," Moseley said. He didn't know it at the time, but he would be right there with them when they did. It was the plan all along.

"It was clear during the 14U National Team Development Program that Adam was meticulous and organized when it came to pitchers," said Ashley Bratcher, USA Baseball Senior Director of Baseball Operations and the 15U National Team program director. "He knew every detail about each player on the field and he created a thorough and development plan for all of them.

"Making him the pitching coach on the 15U National Team in 2018 was one of our easier decisions. He displayed an appreciation to the game, to his craft as a pitcher and to developing the athletes that told us he was the right guy to for the job. It is not an easy task to lead a pitching staff at a World Cup, especially when you were still searching for your first world title, and his experience and dedication to competing that helped lead our program to new heights."

The pitching staff he led in the 2018 U-15 Baseball World Cup posted a combined 1.24 ERA in the nine-game tournament. They outscored their opponents 88-13 on their way to winning the first U-15 Baseball World Cup in USA Baseball history. Adam Moseley returned home from the first international trip of his life with a gold medal.

That gold medal came just one year after he led the Buccaneers to an Alabama State Championship in 2017. It's safe to say the high school player looking at colleges knew exactly what he was meant to do with his life. He chose the right path and USA Baseball is thankful for it.

Adam Moseley's story is the fourth and final story of a four-part series on "How to Become a USA Baseball Coach." The remaining three stories of the series can be found on USABaseball.com.