Jim Morris (born February 20, 1950) is the former head

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

coach at the

University of Miami The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...

and

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

. His teams qualified for NCAA Regionals for 32 consecutive years, 23 at Miami and nine at

. Morris won national championships in 1999 and 2001, and earned National Coach of the Year honors in both seasons.

Early career

Morris began his coaching career as an assistant at Appalachian State in 1975. In 1976, he accepted the challenge of building, from scratch, a baseball program at Atlanta's DeKalb Community College. At DeKalb, Morris started with no players and no field, but he quickly made a name for himself. His Eagles were nationally ranked three times in four years and advanced to the 1977 Junior College World Series, where DeKalb placed second. Morris added two more winning years at DeKalb before moving on to become an assistant coach at

Florida State Florida State University (FSU) is a public university, public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. Founded in 1851, it is located on the oldest continuous site of higher e ...

Georgia Tech

After a two–year stint with the Seminoles, Morris would accept the head coaching job at

. The Yellow Jackets were on the backside of four straight losing seasons and were 4–23 in their first two seasons in the

Atlantic Coast Conference The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) is a collegiate athletic conference located in the eastern United States. Headquartered in Greensboro, North Carolina, the ACC's fifteen member universities compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Associa ...

. At

, Morris was the all-time leader in coaching victories, in any of the school's varsity sports, as he had 12 straight winning seasons, nine straight NCAA regional berths, four straight

titles (1985–88) and a school–record 51 wins in 1987.

Miami

In his tenure at the

, no other program has qualified for the

College World Series The College World Series (CWS), officially the NCAA Men's College World Series (MCWS), is an annual baseball tournament held in June in Omaha, Nebraska. The MCWS is the culmination of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Divisi ...

as often as Morris and his

Miami Hurricanes The Miami Hurricanes (known informally as The U, UM, or The 'Canes) are the intercollegiate sports teams that represent the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. The Hurricanes compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic A ...

. Miami has qualified for the NCAA Tournament a record 44 consecutive years and made it to

Omaha Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest city ...

in 11 of Morris' first 15 seasons in Coral Gables. Morris set an

NCAA 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 an ...

record for guiding a program to the

in each of his first six years at the University of Miami. Morris returned Miami to Omaha in 2015 and 2016 after a seven-year absence. It was announced in June 2014 that Morris would retire following the 2018 season with longtime assistant Gino DiMare as his successor.Navarro, Mann
"UM baseball coach Jim Morris gets three-year contract extension; Gino DiMare to take over after Morris retires"
"Miami Herald", June 24, 2014

Head coaching record

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Morris, Jim Living people 1950 births Appalachian State Mountaineers baseball coaches Florida State Seminoles baseball coaches Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets baseball coaches Miami Hurricanes baseball coaches Junior college baseball coaches in the United States National College Baseball Hall of Fame inductees

Early career

Georgia Tech

Miami

Head coaching record

See also

References