Last November Boise State named Gary Van Tol as the University first baseball coach in 37 years. Since the day he got hired he has kept busy.
“Just chipping away one brick at a time but recruiting is 24/7 a lot of time on the phone and a lot of time on the road but it's going great,” said Boise State Head Baseball Coach Van Tol.
These days Van Tol is traveling the country finding players that will become his first recruiting class.
“I try and see as many guys as I can. I can only be at one place at one time though so I’m trying to do as much homework while I’m at home to make sure when I do go out we are going to see guys that are kind of guys,” said Van Tol
His first recruiting class will be a special one as those players will be the first to wear a Boise State uniform since the program was disbanded back in 1980.
“I have been all over the west coast and into Texas and now the weather is starting to warm up so we will hit the Northwest hard. There is a lot of players out there and there is a lot of interest from across the country which is great,” said Van Tol.
Van Tol hopes to assemble a team with a mixture of high school players from the class of 2019 and junior college transfers. It goes without saying that finding a player that wants to play for a startup program is a challenge.
“A lot of those guys are ready to dance and they want to make decisions. I think we will be able to get some JC guys early than maybe other D1 schools just because of our situation,” said Van Tol.
Boise State is slated to be taking the field in the spring of 2020. Van Tol is still ironing out his schedule but believes it will have some strong opponents and a lengthy amount of games at home.
“There are some good options out there and I’m trying to find some big names of course. I think would be pretty cool especially during the first season. The best part is we are going to have plenty of home games on campus in town. With the total of 56 games that we can play I’m trying to get half of those in Boise,” said Van Tol.
Van Tol will round out his assistant coaches by mid-June and early July.
