Notre Dame baseball head coach Link Jarrett named NCBWA Coach of the Year
Notre Dame baseball head coach Link Jarrett isn’t sure how his day is going to end, but it’s surely off to a great start. The third-year Irish leader has been named the Mike Martin National Coach of the Year by the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association just hours before he leads the Irish out onto the field for the program’s first College World Series appearance since 2002. This is the second consecutive year Jarrett has earned national coach of the year recognition from an outlet after D1 Baseball awarded him in the honor in 2021.
“When you receive an award like this, you think about the moments with the team,” Jarrett said. “I don’t think about anything personal that I did. You think about the execution and character of the guys who played.”
In 2022, Notre Dame finished in second place of the Atlantic Division of the ACC in the regular season and made the ACC Tournament semifinals for the first time since joining the conference in 2014 before falling to eventual champion North Carolina. The Irish are currently 40-15 on the year, reaching 40 wins for the first time since 2006.
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Notre Dame has been one of the top programs in college baseball since Jarrett arrived ahead of the 2020 season. The Irish boast the second-best record in the sport over the last three years; they are 85-30 (.739) under Jarrett. Tennessee is the only team with a better winning percentage in the same time period, and Notre Dame topped the first-ranked Volunteers last weekend in the Knoxville Super Regional to earn their spot in Omaha.
The award was renamed after Martin, who is the all-time winningest head coach in the history of NCAA baseball, in 2020. From 1980-2019, Martin accumulated 2,029 wins at the helm at Florida State. Ironically, Jarrett played for the legend in Tallahassee, Fla., from 1991-94 and is from the area.
“The care with which he handled people that touched the program, his management of the various facets of support you have in a program in this day and age, he handled that beautifully,” Jarrett said. “And he put the players in the best position to win.”
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Notre Dame begins CWS play on Friday night in Omaha, Neb., with a first matchup against No. 9 seed Texas (47-20). First pitch on Friday will be at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.
