The Akron Zips baseball team is the varsity intercollegiate athletic team representing the

University of Akron The University of Akron is a public research university in Akron, Ohio. It is part of the University System of Ohio. As a STEM-focused institution, it focuses on industries such as polymers, advanced materials, and engineering. It is classifie ...

Akron, Ohio Akron () is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Summit County. It is located on the western edge of the Glaciated Allegheny Plateau, about south of downtown Cleveland. As of the 2020 Census, the city prop ...

, United States. The team plays in the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges ...

(NCAA) at the Division I level as a member of the

Mid-American Conference The Mid-American Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) NCAA Division I, Division I collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference with a membership base in the Great Lakes region (North America), Great L ...

(MAC). The program plays at Skeeles Field, which had been the Zips' home from 1967 to 2015. The program was established in early 1873 during the school's first academic year and played in the

Ohio Athletic Conference The Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC) was formed in 1902 and is the third oldest athletic conference in the United States. Its current commissioner is Sarah Otey. Former commissioners include Mike Cleary, who was the first General Manager of a profe ...

(OAC) from 1954 to 1966, the

Ohio Valley Conference The Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. It participates in Division I of the NCAA; the conference's football programs compete in the Football Cham ...

from 1981 through 1987, and the

Mid-Continent Conference The Summit League, or The Summit, is an NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletic conference with its membership mostly located in the Midwestern United States from Illinois on the East of the Mississippi River to the Dakotas and Nebraska on the W ...

for the 1990, 1991, and 1992 seasons. The Zips began competition in the MAC in 1993 and were placed in the East Division when it was created in 2000. The team had one appearance in the

NCAA Division I Baseball Championship The NCAA Division I Baseball Championship is held each year from May through June and features 64 college baseball teams in the United States, culminating in the eight-team Men's College World Series at Charles Schwab Field Omaha in Omaha, Nebr ...

, which came in 1996 following their only MAC Tournament Championship. Additionally, the Zips won the 1954 OAC championship and the 1991 Mid-Continent Conference title. On July 10, 2015, Akron announced the baseball program would be eliminated, effective immediately, after having fielded the sport since 1873 and uninterrupted since 1947. The university cited budget problems as the main reason for ending the program. A group of baseball alumni formed in an effort to try to save the program. Players were permitted to remain on scholarship to finish their degree, though most transferred to other schools to continue their playing careers. On September 19, 2017, the university announced baseball would return for the 2019–20 academic year. It was announced in Fall of 2018 that the baseball team, resuming play in 2020, would be led by Head coach

Chris Sabo Chris is a short form of various names including Christopher, Christian, Christina, Christine, and Christos. Chris is also used as a name in its own right, however it is not as common. People with the given name *Chris Abani (born 1966), Nige ...

, former Major League All-Star and Rookie of the year. His assistants would be Associate Head Coach Jordon Banfield and Pitching Coach Dan McKinney. , Akron and

Northern Illinois Northern Illinois is a region generally covering the northern third of the U.S. state of Illinois. The region is by far the most populous of Illinois with nearly 9.7 million residents as of 2010. Economics Northern Illinois is dominated by t ...

are the only current or former MAC schools not to have a player named the MAC Baseball Player of the Year or

MAC Baseball Pitcher of the Year The Mid-American Conference Baseball Pitcher of the Year is an annual award given to the most outstanding baseball pitcher in the Mid-American Conference The Mid-American Conference (MAC) is a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) ...

since those awards were first given in 1986 and 1988 respectively.

Major League Baseball

Akron has had 22

Major League Baseball Draft The first-year player draft is the primary mechanism of Major League Baseball (MLB) for assigning amateur baseball players from high schools, colleges, and other amateur baseball clubs to its teams. The draft order is determined based on a lo ...

selections since the draft began in 1965.

References

External links

* Baseball teams established in 1873 Baseball teams disestablished in 2015 {{Ohio-baseball-team-stub