Former Arkansas first-base coach Craig Parry enters his fifth year in the spring of 2023 as the Wildcats' hitting coach. He was named to this position by head coach Rick McCarty in July 2018.
Parry additionally works with the Wildcat infielders.
Parry coached Major League Baseball draft pick in Luis Treviño, who was named the Southland Conference Player of the Year, after a historic season in 2019. The ACU catcher was drafted in the 40th round by the Tampa Bay Rays after earning Collegiate Baseball Newspaper Second Team All-America, ABCA/Rawlings Second Team All-America, and NCBWA Third Team All-America honors. Treviño was named to the ABCA/Rawlings First Team Division I All-Midwest Region, and earned First Team All-Southland honors as well. Parry also coached senior Dalon Farkas, who was named Second Team All-SLC as an outfielder, and made the All-Academic squad as well. Joining those two on the all-conference list were pitchers Brennan Lewis (honorable mention) and Spencer Chirpich (honorable mention).
Year two was an unusual one, as was the case around the country. ACU played just 15 games, going 7-8, ending the season with a loss to the Texas Longhorns in Austin. ACU did not get to play past that due to the COVID-19 situation that closed down the entire spring season across the nation.
The program made an all-time re-build come to life in the spring of 2021. It might just be the quickest turnaround in all of college baseball. It all came together in the spring of 2021 with the first-ever Southland Conference championship, a school-record 36 wins, and one of the great offenses in Wildcat history. ACU baseball arrived on the landscape of Division I college baseball this spring, and it plans to stay there awhile.
The strength of the 'Cats during the 2021 season was Parry's offense, and combined with key moments on the mound, it all came together during a historic 11-game winning streak that catapulted ACU to the top of the Southland Conference standings. Then the thought turned from just making the conference tournament to maybe winning a league title. ACU won 17 of its last 21 games to close out the season, and when the season ended, ACU had the Southland Hitter of the Year (Colton Eager), the Southland Newcomer of the Year (Grayson Tatrow).
ACU went 2-2 at the Southland Conference Tournament, appearing in the post-season at the Division I level for the first time. The 'Cats beat Lamar and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi to advance to the semifinals before falling to Sam Houston to end their season. It was a season that included seven all-conference players as well, including three on the first team (Mitchell Dickson, Colton Eager, Bash Randle), one on the second team (Grayson Tatrow), and two on the third team (Tommy Cruz, Brett Hammit). Hunter Gieser and Brett Hammit were each named to the All-Tournament Team as well. Dickson and Eager earned all-academic first team honors too, and Gieser and Miller Ladusau were named to the second team all-academic.
ACU set plenty of records in 2021, including 36 wins, 25 Southland wins, and 11-game winning streak, a 3.45 fall GPA , a 3.36 cumulative GPA, 473 strikeouts, seven all-conference players, and a 104 final RPI.
Year four featured a new direction, as ACU headed into a new era as a member of the Western Athletic Conference. The Wildcats finished with 30 wins yet again, going 30-29 including 14-16 in the WAC play. ACU finished fourth in the Southwest Division of the conference, and after falling to top-seed and nationally-ranked Grand Canyon in the first round of the tournament, the team rattled off four wins in three days to advance to the WAC Championship Game. It was the first appearance for the program in a title game at the Division I level. ACU beat GCU twice in that stretch, including 6-5 in a walk-off thriller, and 15-8 the very next afternoon to advance to the championship. The Wildcats dropped a 7-1 game to NM State in the championship game.
ACU did the unthinkable in 2022, winning five games against Power 5 opponents, including a three-game sweep of Michigan State at home, as well as wins at TCU and at Texas Tech. More history was made with the latter two wins; ACU won its first-ever game against a ranked opponent on March 29 in Fort Worth, topping No. 12 TCU, 6-2. The 'Cats then did one better on May 3 in Lubbock, picking up its first-ever top-10 victory with an 8-5 win over No. 9 Texas Tech.
ACU broke 71 school records as a team or individually in 2022, most in the offensive category. Bash Randle finished as an all-conference performer, and was named to the all-defensive team at shortstop as well. The Wildcats set records for the season for slugging percentage (.484), games played (59), at-bats (2,074), doubles (124), hits (610), home runs (83), walks drawn (283), runs batted in (417), total bases (1,003), most times hit by pitch (92), and most stolen bases (80).
The game most remember is the 10-home run, 23-run performance against Marist on March 5. The 10 homers set a new record and the 23 runs is the second-most for the program.
Grayson Tatrow and Mitchell Dickson each set records for most runs scored in a single season (67 and 56, respectively), while Bash Randle had the highest stolen base percentage in a single season for ACU at .929. Tatrow's 67 runs scored, 17 homeruns hit, 47 walks drawn, and 66 runs batten in all set new records in 2022.
In the classroom, ACU has improved its team GPA every single year since McCarty arrived at ACU. The team put together a 3.41 cumulative team GPA during the 2021-22 academic year, improving from a 3.35 the year before. ACU had a 3.17 GPA in 2018-19, and improved to 3.21 in 2019-20.
A veteran coach with eight years experience through five previous assignments, Parry’s success stories include Trevor Rucker (Southern Arkansas) and Daniel Salters (DBU). Rucker was named the 2016-17 GAC Male Athlete of the Year and First Team All-America by the National College Baseball Writers’ Association (NCBWA) and Division II Conference Commissioner’s Association (D2CCA). A four-time All-GAC selection, Rucker also was a finalist for the Tino Martinez Division II Player of the Year.
Salters threw out 23-of-49 would-be base stealers in 2015 and was selected in the 13th round of the MLB Draft by the Cleveland Indians following that season.
DBU won a school-record 46 games and hosted its first NCAA Regional with Salters behind the plate, and the following season Parry coached Matt Duce, who was a Second Team All-Missouri Valley and MVC All-Defensive selection. Duce batted .320 or higher in each of his last two seasons and tied for second on the team with 55 RBI as a junior prior to being selected in the 14th round by the New York Mets.
While working with Rucker at Southern Arkansas, Parry was part of a team that finished 39-16 in 2017 and hit .309 to advance to the NCAA Central Regional for the 11th time in program history. The offense led the GAC in all major offensive categories including average, slugging (.505), doubles (125), triples (19), home runs (66), runs scored (408), and hits (568).
Parry later worked extensively with Arkansas backstop Grant Koch (.245/.375/.358 / 1 error / 9 caught stealing), who was Pittsburgh’s fifth-round draft pick in 2018.
A native of Colstrip, Mont., Parry began his coaching career at Miles (Montana) Community College and later coached a Sacramento State before starting his three-year tenure at DBU (2014-16). He then moved on to Southern Arkansas for the 2017 season and reached the 2018 College World Series Finals with the Razorbacks.
Parry's collegiate playing career began at Miles (Miles City, Mont.) Community College, where he was a two-time all-conference selection and all-region honoree. He then transferred to South Dakota State and was both a First Team All-Summit League selection and Second Team ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America. He was then selected in the 50th round of the 2008 MLB draft by Pittsburgh, and played two seasons (2008-09) as a catcher and outfielder in the Pirates' minor league system.
Parry earned his Bachelor’s degree from South Dakota State University in 2010, and later picked up his Master’s degree in Sports Management from American Public University (2012).
He and his wife, Morgan, have a daughter, Nora Kate, born in November 2018.
