July 28, 2008
ATLANTA – Danny Hall, whose Georgia Tech baseball teams have averaged more than 43 wins per season over the last 15 years, has signed a one-year contract extension, athletic director Dan Radakovich announced Monday. The new deal extends his contract through the 2012 season.
Hall became the Yellow Jackets’ all-time leader in coaching victories in 2005 and has compiled a 652-294 (.689) record at Georgia Tech. His teams have won at least 40 games in 12 of his 15 seasons with the Yellow Jackets and eclipsed the 30-win mark every year.
“Our baseball program has garnered unprecedented success, both within the conference and on the national level,” Radakovich said, “and Danny is the primary person responsible for that success. He continues to recruit the brightest and most talented student-athletes in the nation and that has translated into the success this program has achieved over the last 15 years.”
In Hall’s 15 seasons as Tech’s head coach, the Jackets have made 13 NCAA Tournament and three College World Series appearances, won three Atlantic Coast Conference championships (2000, 2003, 2005) and captured ACC regular season crowns in 1997, 2000, 2004 and 2005. The three-time ACC Coach of the Year (1997, 2000, 2005), Hall’s players have earned All-America honors 27 times while more than 80 of his student-athletes have signed professional contracts since 1994.
Georgia Tech finished 41-21, 16-15 in the ACC and earned an NCAA Tournament berth in 2008. Four players – senior Brad Feltes, juniors Charlie Blackmon and David Duncan and freshman Derek Dietrich – were named to an All-ACC team. Seven Yellow Jackets were selected in the 2008 Major League Baseball draft, and 43 have been drafted over the last five years, the most for any Atlantic Coast Conference team.
Hall came to Georgia Tech after a successful six-year stint as the head coach at Kent State, where he led the Golden Flashes to Mid-American Conference championships and bids to NCAA regionals in each of his last two seasons. He forged a 208-117 (.640) record in his six years at Kent State, twice winning Mid-American Conference Coach of the Year honors. He also won more games than any other MAC school from 1989-93.
In his first year at Georgia Tech (1994), Hall guided an extremely talented and veteran unit with four All-Americas and three first-round draft choices to the brink of a national championship, Georgia Tech’s first-ever appearance in the College World Series, and a 50-17 record.
The Yellow Jacket skipper guided Tech to its second College World Series appearance in 2002 by turning in one of the best coaching jobs of his career, leading a Tech team that included 17 freshmen and only three seniors back to Omaha.
Georgia Tech, which earned a top-eight national seed in the NCAA Tournament for the fourth-consecutive year, advanced to its third College World Series since Hall’s arrival in 2006.
A former president of the American Baseball Coaches Association, Hall now sits on its Board of Directors and is directly responsible for future elected officers within the ABCA as a member of its Nominations Committee.
Hall, a 1977 graduate of Miami (Ohio), was selected to the Miami Hall of Fame in 1998, and he was inducted into the Miami Cradle of Coaches in 2007. He’s also a member of the Kent State University Hall of Fame following his induction in 2005.
