Wake Forest Athletics
Deacon Coach Finds Home in Winston-Salem
2/15/2010 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
Feb. 15, 2010
By Alex Botoman
WakeForestSports.com
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - After spending two years as assistant general manager of the Greensboro Bats minor-league team in the early `90s, first-year Wake Forest baseball head coach Tom Walter always knew that he wanted to find his way back to the region. Consider it a mission accomplished.
Walter, who came to Wake by way of the University of New Orleans, is set to manage his first game in charge of the Demon Deacons on Feb. 19 against Army, and he could not be happier about it.
"I certainly never imagined being down the road at Wake Forest, but I always wanted to get back to the Carolina area," Walter said. "The two years I spent in Greensboro, I really fell in love with the area and the people, so I was always looking for an opportunity in coaching to get back to this area."
Forget coaching at Wake Forest, Walter was not even sure that he wanted to be a coach when he graduated from Georgetown, where he was a two-year captain of the baseball team and a member of the 1991 Big East Conference All-Academic Team.
After not finding anything to his liking in the job market, Walter backed into a coaching career while working on a graduate degree at George Washington University.
"My dad introduced me to a guy who was the assistant basketball coach at GW and said that the baseball team might be looking for somebody," Walter said. "I really went back to GW just as a way to get my master's till I figured out what I was going to do. While I was there as a grad assistant I kind of fell in love with coaching, and I've stuck with it ever since."
Walter eventually worked his way up to the head coaching position at George Washington where he remained for eight seasons. He currently sits as the all-time wins leader at GW with a record of 275-184, and he led the Colonials to an appearance in the 2002 NCAA Tournament.
Walter left GW in 2004 to take over as head coach at the University of New Orleans where he would face the greatest challenge of his life.
In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast, causing widespread devastation and forcing the UNO baseball team to evacuate the city. The Privateers took shelter in Las Cruces, N. M., Mobile, Ala. and Westwego, La., before finally returning to New Orleans in March 2006.
"It was a logistical nightmare so to speak. We had 39 guys on the team when Hurricane Katrina hit, 29 of which were first-year players at UNO. We had a brand-new recruiting class in there," Walter said. "So trying to rerecruit each of those guys and get them to stay at UNO was a challenge, but also just finding a home for us was a challenge. That first month after the hurricane was a lot of sleepless nights just trying to get us organized."
In a storyline fitting of a Hollywood movie, less than two years after being forced to flee his home, Walter led UNO to the 2007 Sun Belt Tournament title - the school's first since 1979. It's no surprise that he ranks the championship and subsequent NCAA Tournament berth as his greatest coaching achievement.
"That group that had been through Hurricane Katrina, had gone to New Mexico with the team and evacuated their home city - basically a group of guys who had lost everything in the hurricane. A year and a half after the hurricane for us to win a Sun Belt championship, that's certainly my most special moment," Walter said.
At Wake Forest, Walter will be facing a challenge of a different type. The 2009 Deacs struggled to a 22-30 record, including 6-24 in Atlantic Coast Conference play. However, if Coach Walter's history is any indicator, success for the Demon Deacons is right on the horizon. Walter took over the program in the fall, and has already succeeded in winning a few fans - his new players.
"Last year was tough for all of us. This year we needed a fresh start altogether, and I think we've gotten that so far. The attitude's different around the club and we're very excited about the season coming up," said senior captain and catcher Mike Murray.
"We had the fall to kind of get acclimated to his program and obviously the other coaching changes as well," Murray continued. "We've come out here and got a lot of work done in a short amount of time. We've been very efficient I think. What Coach Walter does very well is communicate with the players. He's let us know his expectations for us and in turn what we can expect from him, so as of February it's been going very well."
With the 2010 season only days away, Walter laid out his goals for the year.
"Our number one goal for this season is to make the ACC Tournament and finish .500 in the league," he said. "I think that's a realistic goal. It's certainly an aggressive goal based on what they did last year, but certainly I think it's in our reach if we get some good pitching."
Despite not yet managing a single game for the Demon Deacons, Walter isn't afraid to talk about spending the rest of his coaching career in Winston-Salem. After all, this is the area he has been trying to return to since that short stint in Greensboro.
"The people at Wake are such good people," Walter said. "They are good, kind people who care about Wake Forest athletics and Wake Forest University so it's really been a neat thing for me to see. Having been at two other universities, we had good situations there but certainly nothing like the family atmosphere we have here at Wake.
"(Wake) is a program in the ACC that's had a great deal of success in the past," Walter said. "We just bought the minor league park. Once we do our renovations and our facility is on-par with the other teams in the league there's no reason that I couldn't be here forever"
If he continues the success that he's had at every stop on his coaching journey, there's no reason that Demon Deacon fans won't want Walter at Wake forever too - especially if his long-term goal of making the College World Series comes to fruition.
"Long term it's to get back to Omaha," Walter said. "That's why I left the University of New Orleans to come here was because we've got a chance to host regionals here; we have a conference that carries the type of RPI that you need in order to be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Every team in our league can legitimately say that they have a chance to go to Omaha."
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