New coaches at TROY

TROY Athletics Director Brent Jones has shown that he has a keen eye when it comes to hiring head coaches following the early success from Football Head Coach Jon Sumrall, Baseball Head Coach Skylar Meade and Men’s Golf Head Coach Forrest Schultz. Jones dipped into the well again with the hiring of Eric Newell to lead the Softball program and Stuart Gore to direct the Soccer program.

Newell led Auburn University at Montgomery to backto-back No. 3 national rankings the past two seasons as the Warhawks were among the final six teams remaining in the 2022 NCAA Division II Softball World Series after AUM won both its Regional and Super Regional matchups.

“Coach Newell is a national-championship-winning coach who has had tremendous success everywhere he has been,” Jones said. “He is a relentless recruiter who knows our recruiting area extremely well while also having regional and national connections and demonstrating a proven track record in player development. The future is incredibly bright with Eric Newell leading our proud softball program.”

In 16 seasons as a head coach, Newell’s teams have dominated on the field, posting a combined .727 winning percentage between his eight years at Williams Baptist (254-121) and eight seasons at AUM (302-88). Newellcoached teams have won eight conference titles and appeared in six NCAA or NAIA postseason tournaments with four World Series appearances.

Newell’s aggressive style of play led AUM to ranking in the top 14 nationally in scoring his final four seasons with the program. Additionally, the Warhawks stole more than 100 bases in each of his final four full seasons, including 179 in 2019, the third-most in the country. AUM’s 2.82 stolen bases per game in 2018 were the fifth-most nationally.

AUM’s dominance also translated to the circle, where Warhawk pitchers combined for a 1.97 ERA with 66 complete games and 54 shutouts from 2019 to 2022.

Gore comes to TROY with seven years of collegiate head coaching experience, having won 81.3% of his games and five conference championships. He most recently had a highly successful two-year stint as the head coach at Northwestern State, where he led the Demons to 25 wins, an NCAA Tournament appearance, two Southland Conference Player of the Year honorees and a No. 61 final RPI ranking in 2022.

“Coach Gore is a national-champion coach who has won at every level he has coached,” Jones said. “He is an extremely talented recruiter with a deep love for the sport of women’s soccer. His teams play with passion and toughness on the pitch and have succeeded in the classroom and the community.”

Under Gore’s leadership, Northwestern State led the country in corners in 2022 and ranked in the top 25% nationally in all attacking and defending categories. The Demons finished the 2022 season with a 12-4-3 overall record. Additionally, Gore added Gracie Armstrong to the program as a graduate transfer, and she would go on to earn Southland Conference Player of the Year honors after scoring 26 points with nine goals and eight assists.

Gore built the Northwestern Ohio program from the ground up, leading the Racers to an NAIA National Championship, four straight NAIA Final Four appearances, a 100-15-5 overall record, a national player of the year and 23 All-Americans.

He had immediate success in the program’s inaugural season, leading Northwestern Ohio to a 15-5-1 record, springboarding the program to four straight 20-win seasons before he moved on to James Madison.

It took just three seasons for Gore to lead the Racers to the NAIA National Championship Game and 16 shutouts (most in the country), and then in Gore’s fourth season, he brought a National Championship to the program. The 2016 squad led the country with 20 shutouts, boasting the National Player of the Year and five All-Americans.

TROY creates ‘Gem of the Sun Belt’

Renovations are underway to transform TROY’s RiddlePace Field into one of the crown jewels of collegiate baseball. The facility is receiving a new scoreboard, all new chairback seating, renovated press area, new premium RBI Club down the first base line and coaches offices down the third base line.

Demolition began shortly after the last game of the season with construction following shortly after.

The renovations to Riddle-Pace were announced on the day Skylar Meade was hired as head coach and he says the new additions will add to the overall experience of being a Trojan Baseball fan. Meade says that knowing a new stadium was in the works helped bring him to TROY as he has seen the benefits that a new facility can have on a collegiate baseball program.

“It’s something we knew coming in,” says Meade. “This was already an incredibly appealing job at the time looking back a little less than a year ago, but this took it to another stratosphere because we’re trying to do things here that have never been done and sometimes you have to really invest in order to do that and you see that around the country with different programs. What’s happened is they’ve invested. You look at Coastal’s new stadium. When Louisville did it. Those programs ended up going to Omaha, one winning a national championship, once they invested in their stadium; and we hope that the same future holds true for us.”

National Football Foundation awards dinner

Sumrall and TROY Football recognized for recruitment

In an article released by AL.com, based on a survey the digital news site conducted with Alabama’s high school football coaches, TROY came out on top as the best recruiter in the state. In fact, TROY was mentioned almost twice as many times as the next closest school, UAB, and 13 more times than Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama and 18 more times than Bryan Harsin’s staff at Auburn. “For me, everything we do in recruiting and in relationships starts here at home,” said Head Coach Jon Sumrall.