Goldey-Beacom College Announces Tom Riley as its First Baseball Coach

Baseball | 11/16/2015 12:00:00 AM

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The re-instatement of Goldey-Beacom's baseball program will be led by Tom Riley, who the College has chosen as head coach.

Riley does not have far to travel, spending the last three seasons as an assistant coach for Delaware State University. He handled many things within the program including recruiting, monitoring academic development, heading the team's Dugout Club for fundraising, leading the program's baseball camps and being in charge of field maintenance.

Riley's influence helped the Hornets in 2014 lead Division I with a .336 batting average, a .435 on-base percentage and close second with 8.2 runs per contest. The 2013 unit paced the NCAA with 3.02 stolen bases per game.

Delaware State has had 23 players named All-Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference during Riley's time and one pitcher, Jordan Elliott, signed by the Philadelphia Phillies.

Prior to that, Riley owned and was a personal trainer for Riley Performance Training in Texas. He also was head coach for the Austin Big Dogs U-16 Summer Team.

Riley is no stranger to the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference, having been an assistant coach at Dominican (NY) College from 2001-04. He served as hitting coach two seasons with the Chargers batting at least .309 each year and two seasons as pitching coach with the squad leading the CACC in ERA and strikeouts both years.

Dominican won three CACC titles in that stretch and had 13 all-conference players, nine all-region members and one All-America. The Chargers also saw eight players play professional ball and two pitchers in 2002 drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals.

Riley graduated the United States Sports Academy in 2013 magna cum laude with a degree in Sport Studies. He is working on his Masters in Sport Administration.

"We are excited to announce the hiring of Tom Riley as our head baseball coach for our inaugural season in 2017," Director of Athletics Chuck Hammond said. "Tom's experiences at Delaware State and Dominican College have given him the tools necessary to build and develop a solid program that will make the college and local community proud. Having over 300 applicants for the position, our search committee worked hard identifying the qualities that we are looking for from our head coach. Through that, we learned Tom possesses these qualities and we are excited to see him put together our first recruiting class. I personally would like to welcome Tom and his family to Goldey-Beacom College."

During the fall 2016 semester, Goldey-Beacom will welcome back baseball as the College's 11th sport. The team will play its home games at the Piedmont Baseball League field in Hockessin, DE.

While baseball will be new under the name Goldey-Beacom College, it actually will be a re-instatement for the institution. Baseball was played at what was then called Goldey College as early as 1922 and continued into the 1950s. This included an undefeated season in 1935 and the Atlantic Coast championship (no affiliation with the current Atlantic Coast Conference) in 1947.

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