Bolt Extended

On Tuesday, Nebraska announced that head baseball coach Will Bolt signed a 5 year extension through the 2029 season. Fresh off the magical run to the program’s first Big Ten Tournament Championship, and first conference tournament championship since the legendary 2005 team, the university bumped up Bolt’s annual salary from $400,000 to $500,000.

Going off of the numbers from the end of last season (which are probably already completely irrelevant 2 months later) that would put Bolt right around the top 17-20 highest paid coaches in the country, depending on any other compensation he gets on top of his salary. This also puts him slightly above Tracy Smith for the top spot in the Big Ten conference. Smith will earn $470,000 base salary this season.

It’s easy to see why Athletic Director Tony Dannen wanted to resign Bolt. Bolt has been the head coach for 4 full seasons at NU, and has 2 conference championships and 2 NCAA regional appearances to his name. In fact, 8 of the Huskers’ 19 NCAA appearances have had Will Bolt in the dugout or on the field in some capacity. The 2024 Huskers reached the coveted 40 win mark for the first time since 2014. Bolt’s 137 total wins are already good for 6th all time as a Husker head coach.

Staff Additions Announced

It was a busy day in the baseball offices, as not only was the extension for Bolt announced, but a few new faces were announced to the support staff.

Derek Roy joins the staff as the director of player development. The last person to hold that title was Rob Childress prior to sliding over to pitching coach last year. Roy has been a fast riser in the coaching ranks. He assisted at Georgia State last season, helping with pitching and player development. Before that, he was recruiting coordinator and pitching coach for Wake Technical Community College, helping them to a 6 win improvement from the previous year and sending 13 players to 4 year schools.

The team is going with a new strength and conditioning coach in Garrett Plumlee. Plumlee replaces Bryce Siecko who was hired from Purdue in Will Bolt’s first offseason as coach. Plumlee comes to NU after a year on the staff of the Milwaukee Brewers Triple-A affiliate. Prior to that he helped with TCU S&C as a grad assistant for baseball and swimming and diving.

A familiar face to Husker fans will be Cole Evans. Evans will serve as the team’s graduate manager after 2 years on the baseball team. Evans takes the spot occupied for the past two seasons by former Husker catcher Gunner Hellstrom, who joined the staff at Odessa College, a Texas JUCO.