Over the summer, Wake Forest introduced Tom Walter as the new head coach of baseball.Walter is now in his third head coaching job after having positions at George Washington and New Orleans. At George Washington, Walter’s teams set school records in wins and made it to the NCAA Regionals. At New Orleans, Walter’s teams battled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to have very successful seasons.

In 2007, Walter led New Orleans to the NCAA tournament for the first time in school history.  Under Walter, New Orleans had one of the best offenses in baseball with school records in home runs, hits, runs and RBI. This year, Walter chose to lead the Demon Deacons to the diamond.

“Originally I chose Wake because it was in the ACC, and the ACC, the past few years, has been the best baseball conference in the country,” Walter said.

“Once I started to look into the university and just find out what a great school it is, once I got on campus and saw what a great campus it is and what a family environment it is here, and what a unique and special place Wake Forest is, I became really excited about it.”

“The final straw was just speaking with Ron Wellman and Mike Buddie about their vision for Wake Forest baseball and their athletic department as a whole. There has been a lot of success in all of their athletic programs here. So my thinking was, why not baseball?”

Walter hopes to bring Wake Forest back to the prominence that it had earlier this decade.

“The goal this year is certainly to finish over .500 and make the ACC tournament and be playing our best baseball at the end of the year,” said Walter.

“The goal in year two is to make an NCAA regional, and be playing our best baseball at the end of the year” Walter said.

“By year three we should be talented enough and experienced enough where we have a legitimate shot to compete for a berth in the College World Series,” Walter said.

Walter hopes to obtain this success by a new recruiting strategy.

“The one philosophy of recruiting we have is bigger scholarships to fewer players,” said Walter.

“In general we want to sign 8 pitchers to decent money, we want to sign 8 hitters to decent money, and then we want to have 4 guys that can play both ways. I think those 20 guys will eat up 90% of our at bats and 90% of our innings pitched” Walter said.

According to Walter the other 10 guys on the roster will be walk-ons that may develop into scholarship players or walk-ons that serve a specific role on the team, such as a defensive replacement.

While Walter is looking to the future of Wake  Forest baseball, he also likes the current team.

“I love their attitude; their work ethic has been fantastic. I know they want to win and want to get better. I certainly love the make-up of this team,” Walter said.

The offense was a large problem last year, but Walter has plans to fix that through recruiting and teaching.

“We’re going to put money into our offensive players. The more you pay for your hitter, the better he should be,” Walter said. “We’re also going to develop them. We run a very teaching oriented program here. It starts with individual work.

“We do teach a certain way of hitting that lends itself to driving the ball out of the ballpark.  It starts with one-on-one time with the coaches and coming up with a very specific plan of what we want each hitter to look like,” Walter said.

Walter is also going to bring a different style of coaching to Wake Forest.

“I think players would say that I’m fair, that I treat all our players with respect. I let them play. I don’t micromanage every at bat. I let them go out and play. Even when they’re struggling a little bit, I’ll stick with them” said Walter.

“There are two ways to come out of the line-up. One is to be lazy and not put the work in. And two is to put yourself in front of the team,” Walter said.

Despite having impressive credentials, Walter believes that nothing in the past matters anymore.

“The first team meeting I told the guys, you don’t care what I did at UNO or at GW, and I don’t care about how things used to be at Wake Forest. The only thing that matters is what we do as a group moving forward,” Walter said.

Walter is hopeful that Wake Forest will be a National Championship team very soon.

“The kids have to put the work in first, they have to believe in themselves second, third they have to believe in the coaching staff and fourth they have to believe in each other. Once that happens we’ll be a championship caliber team,” Walter said.