Colonels closer to hiring baseball coach

Nicholls State University Athletics Director Rob Bernardi announced Thursday afternoon that his department expects to hire a new baseball coach this week.

Bernardi said three candidates have emerged from a “large pool” of applicants who formally applied for the Colonels’ vacant position.

“We had close to 30 applicants total,” Bernardi said. “It has been a very large and talented pool to choose from.”

The athletics director said the three finalists interviewed in Thibodaux Monday – interviews that will lead to a new coach being in “the very immediate future.”

“We expect to have a coach in place by around mid-to-late [this] week,” Bernardi said.

Bernardi did not confirm the identity of any of the applicants for the job, but he did confirm several of the applicants were currently affiliated with other universities.

“We’d rather not release the complete list, because some of the applicants asked to remain confidential because of their affiliation to their current schools,” he said.

Having experience on the college level was one of the things Bernardi said he instructed the Colonels’ search committee to hold in high regard when looking for applicants.

Being able to win on the field, while also balancing student athletes in the classroom is something Bernardi said is a must for the new coach, as the Colonels try and stay above the NCAA-mandated APR score – a number they have finally reached for the first time in the program’s history.

“APR is basically the core element that drives the college athletics world, especially in the sport of baseball, where nationally the trend is that those APR scores tend to be a little lower than in the other sports,” he said. “So someone with a college coaching background and experience who can balance those issues dealing with running a Division I program, that’s one of the things we held in a high regard throughout this process.”

But even without listing the people who applied for the job, Bernardi said the pool of applicants was very impressive.

That turnout is something he said he credits former coach Chip Durham with. The Colonels’ former coach, who resigned in July to take a job in the public sector, is credited with turning around the program in terms of talent, and in the classroom.

“The interest we’ve gotten from the coaches from within our region and from some coaches from outside our region are astounding,” Bernardi said. “Ideally, this is not the best time to be looking for a coach, because a lot of changes around the country have already been made … But to have 30 applicants at this time of the year shows just how far we’ve come as a program and that’s something we’re proud of.”