Tom Hager celebrated for building on his legacy with 800th win

Oct. 4—JAMESTOWN — When the final strike was thrown to secure the University of Jamestown's 2-1 win over Valley City State University on Sept. 28, the team sprinted out of the dugout to celebrate the win that achieved a milestone.

The win meant head coach Tom Hager became the 12th active coach in the NAIA to reach the 800-win mark. Hager gives a lot of credit for his ability to achieve the milestone to his wife, Judy, and the rest of his family.

"When you're gone a lot on recruiting trips and coaching in baseball games, there's a lot of time away from home," Hager said. "So in order to be able to achieve a milestone like I did recently, I have to have a supportive wife, an understanding family, and I'm so thankful that I do."

After the win against the Vikings, Jimmies graduate students Hayden Brown and Cade Torgerson dumped water on their head coach to celebrate the historic achievement. Brown said it is an incredible feeling to be a part of the team that got Hager his record-setting win. After every win that the team had during the fall, Brown said he would update his teammates on how close Hager was to 800.

After the win, Hager said he got the baseball and is planning on having the team sign it for him.

Hager was officially hired to be the head coach on Sept. 2, 1999, taking over for Steve Olson, who left to be the head coach at the University of Minnesota Crookston. Olson said during Hager's stint as a student assistant he said he wanted to be a coach.

"He was able to go do that and there were several times that we talked about where he was going to go and what he was going to do and the University of North Dakota was one of those stops and then of course moving on from there to Michigan State (University)," Olson said. "Then of course, we followed him along the way and there was no doubt that he was gonna be a really good coach."

When he was a player at then-Jamestown College, Hager played under Olson and then coached with him. Olson was in attendance at Hager's 800th win.

"It's a lot of fun just to come here and for me to be back in the area but for me to have a chance to watch this baseball game," Olson said. "It's a great baseball game today and (to) watch him coach in it. I'm just happy to be able to be around and watch him coach ... He's really grown and really does well."

Hager's first career win came on March 9, 2000, when the Jimmies beat Northern State University 5-0. If he was told that he would win 800 games immediately after that game, Hager said he would've accepted the challenge and embraced the grind to get there.

Over his 23 years as the head coach, Hager said he has grown a tremendous amount.

"One of the first things I've learned is that I need to be me and I'm intense and I'm passionate and I'm not gonna apologize to anybody for that," Hager said. "I think with that comes seasoning and I've learned that you can't be in your face, yelling and screaming every moment of every day. When I first started coaching, I yelled just to yell and now I think I'm taking an approach where I will yell and get intense when I need to do."

One of the players to join the program early in Hager's tenure was Sam Joseph, who played from 2003 to 2004. Prior to joining the program, Joseph said he knew nothing about Jamestown or the school. Joseph said Hager taught him how to hit the ball to all parts of the field.

"A lot of people from the outside in look at him, he yells a lot, hooting and hollering and most of the time we're not even sure what he's yelling about," Joseph said. "When I was playing I had fun with it, people look at him now and think he's wound tight, when he was coaching with us he was really yelling but at the same time my job as a player on the team was to make things fun, to loosen things up. That was my goal every time was to make Coach Hager smile, make him relax a little bit, 'hey man we got this.' Sometimes, we teased him about it, take the tension off him a little bit but that fire and energy he brought every game helped us out."

One moment that sticks out in current graduate assistant and former pitcher Noah Soltero's mind about Hager's drive to be great and his fiery attitude was a speech on the bus after a tough loss.

"I will always remember the day that he asked if any of us even deserved to wear the Jimmie dry-fit," Soltero said with a chuckle. "This was after a brutal loss that we shouldn't have lost to ... The intensity was there and we knew exactly how he felt about it and it's brought a little bit of shame on all of us too because we were a part of that, we were what led to that. That was definitely a good moment, you know your coach is all about it when he's on the front of the bus pouring his heart and soul and rips off his dry-fit and tells us that he doesn't even know if he should wear that because we didn't represent the University of Jamestown like we should've."

Out of the current seven assistants that Hager has on his staff, all of them are former players, including Ryan Iliff, who has been on his staff for the last 10 years. Iliff said he loves being on Hager's staff and continuing to help the team try to get back to the College World Series. Iliff said most of the things he has learned over his time with Hager has not been on the field but more on how to be a successful coach.

"I think it's more of the mental side of things and how you handle adversity and how you have to push the right buttons with the right people at the right time," Iliff said.

Since 2019, Joseph has been the head coach of the Jamestown American Legion baseball team. He said he constantly talks about the sport with Hager and gets his advice.

More than the accomplishments on the field, his former and current players say Hager is a great person as well as a great coach.

"At the beginning of the year he tells us, 'If you want to be a good team you have to get here' and he points to the picture of Lewiston, the NAIA World Series," Soltero said. "But never once does he speak on his own accolades and I think that's a really selfless thing to do."