After success in North Carolina, new USI baseball coach Chris Ramirez is closer to home

EVANSVILLE — New University of Southern Indiana baseball coach Chris Ramirez is happy to be closer to home.

He and his wife, Lindsay, are both from southeast Iowa, so what used to be a 14-hour drive to their families from North Carolina is now six hours from Evansville. They're looking forward to moving back to the Midwest soon and searching for schools for their three children, Layla, Mia and Stryker, to attend.

Ramirez, who was announced as the Screaming Eagles' sixth head coach on July 7 , will lead a Division I program for the first time. He's already familiar with USI, having coached its former Great Lakes Valley Conference foe the University of Illinois Springfield from 2014-19. He feels his time with the Prairie Stars has given him a little connection to the Eagles.

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"I know I'm certainly familiar with the success that they've had, the tradition of winning," Ramirez said. "When I got the job at Illinois Springfield, the pride of the conference was USI baseball. Even though I'm not an alumnus, I do feel like I've got a very good understanding of the expectations that the alumni have. And the program that they've built is one that I know there's a lot of pride around."

Ramirez led Illinois Springfield to the NCAA II Midwest Regional and the GLVC regular season championship in 2018, then a Midwest Super Regional appearance the following spring. His success continued over the next five seasons at Lenoir-Rhyne, turning it into regional contenders in 2022 and guiding it to that year's South Atlantic Conference title. Ramirez is 351-202-1 in his 11 years as a head coach.

He's seen D-I competition up close, both as a player at High Point and as an assistant at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. There are plenty of things he learned at each stop, especially from the two D-II programs.

"It's kind of justification that the program that we run, it works," Ramirez said. "And it translates to both the state school and a private school, from the Midwest to the southeast. I'm excited to be able to bring that program and implement it with USI at the Division I level."

Ramirez is also proud of what his predecessor Tracy Archuleta did at USI. He led the Eagles for 18 years and became the winningest coach in program history with a 571-383 record. The two-time D-II Coach of the Year is now at Indiana State .

"I think me and Coach Archuleta had a good, competitive relationship that I respected and appreciated," Ramirez said. "Whenever (Illinois Springfield) came to play USI or USI came to play us, there was a handshake and a welcome, but we both knew we were there for business. He was there to win and I was there to win. I think that type of mentality that he had aligns with the way that I am, especially on game days."

USI aims to leap forward heading into Year 3 in D-I. The Eagles' last winning season came in 2021 and they've gone 65-98 since. They also lost multiple players to the transfer portal, including some to Indiana State. Ramirez's primary goal for his team is to take things day by day.

"We've been underdogs before, but we've never taken the field and expected to lose," he said. "So if we go one game at a time and I don't expect to lose, any game that we enter into, then I guess it's a 56-0 mentality until someone changes that. We'll go one game at a time until somebody upsets us."

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Ramirez and his coaching staff are constructing USI's roster from Evansville out. They already added a slew of players this month while some local talent has also committed to the Eagles.

"We want the top local guys to have an option to come stay home and play for us," Ramirez said. "We definitely are excited about how talented the high school baseball is in Evansville and in the surrounding communities. And we'll definitely be working hard to get to know the high school (and) travel ball coaches from Evansville out."

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: After success in North Carolina, new USI baseball coach Chris Ramirez is closer to home