ABILENE, Texas (KCBD) – Abilene Christian University has hired longtime coach Larry Hays as its head softball coach, Vice President for Athletics Zack Lassiter announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Hays, the sixth softball coach in ACU history, brings 49 years of college coaching experience and a combined career record of 1,902-951-8. \u201cWe could not be more excited to add a coach of Larry Hays\u2019 caliber to the Wildcat family,\u201d Lassiter said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbilene Christian is a university that honors God and I\u2019m excited to be a part of that,\u201d Hays said. \u201cIt is a great opportunity to accept the challenge and try to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hays has gone 394-91-4 as a softball head coach, including four seasons of at least 50 wins. He spent one season at Lubbock Christian in 2010, leading the Lady Chaparrals to a 54-7 record and a berth in the NAIA National Tournament.<\/p>\n
He most recently coached eight seasons at NCAA Division II Colorado Christian, winning three Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference tournament championships and guiding the Cougars to five consecutive NCAA Regional appearances. His 2026 team went 55-7 and won 47 straight games, returning all but two seniors.<\/p>\n
Before coaching softball, Hays built his reputation in college baseball. He coached 16 seasons at Lubbock Christian in baseball, leading the Chaparrals to the 1983 NAIA national championship and producing 10 seasons with at least 40 wins.<\/p>\n
He then spent 22 seasons as Texas Tech\u2019s baseball coach from 1987-2008, becoming the program\u2019s winningest coach. Texas Tech had not won a conference title or reached the NCAA postseason before his arrival, but later won titles in the Southwest Conference and Big 12 and made nine NCAA tournament appearances under Hays. He reached 1,500 career wins in his final season, and Texas Tech retired his No. 27 jersey in 2009.<\/p>\n
Hays has won 12 coach of the year awards \u2014 nine in baseball and three in softball \u2014 and has been inducted into four halls of fame, including the NAIA Hall of Fame, the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame and the National College Baseball Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
In addition to his baseball and softball roles at Lubbock Christian, Hays also coached men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball and served as the school\u2019s athletic director from 1979-87.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 KCBD. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ABILENE, Texas (KCBD) – Abilene Christian University has hired longtime coach Larry Hays as its head softball coach,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347723,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[6040,30026,124107,21061,112154,124108,6914,46014,124106,66,168,170,169,1771,5804,223,26793,154,1769,375],"class_list":["post-347722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lubbock","tag-abilene","tag-abilene-christian","tag-abilene-christian-softball","tag-abilene-christian-university","tag-acu","tag-acu-softball","tag-coach","tag-college-softball","tag-larry-hays","tag-local","tag-lubbock","tag-lubbock-headlines","tag-lubbock-news","tag-ncaa","tag-new","tag-news","tag-softball","tag-sports","tag-texas-tech","tag-west-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}