Dave Schrage Position: Head Coach Alma Mater: Creighton '83

Dave Schrage - whose 19 previous seasons as a college head coach include 16 at the Division I level, most recently with an Evansville squad that ranked among the nation's hottest teams in the 2006 postseason - was introduced July 18, 2006, as the 19th head coach in the history of the Notre Dame baseball program. Schrage completed his fourth year at Evansville in 2006 while guiding the Aces to the most successful season in the program's history, highlighted by winning the Missouri Valley Conference regular-season and tournament titles, reaching the NCAA regional championship round, and earning a final national ranking of 19th by Collegiate Baseball magazine. Already regarded as one of the nation's top coaches, Schrage hit the ground running at Notre Dame in the summer of 2006 and proceeded to hire an impressive group of assistant coaches before signing a recruiting class that was rated by Student Sports as the 13th-best in the nation. The class ultimately could be ranked even higher when they arrive at Notre Dame in the fall of 2007, as baseball recruiting rankings typically wait until the following fall to evaluate each team's signee group.

The first class of the Schrage era at Notre Dame includes 10 talented high school seniors, headlined by three pitchers who each are rated by Perfect Game among the nation's top-40 pitching prospects and the nation's fifth-rated prep shortstop. Schrage's final class at Evansville - the current Aces freshmen - also was rated high on a national scale, after being ranked 21st on Baseball America's list of the top recruiting classes (for players embarking on the current season).

The four previous stops in Schrage's head coaching career - most recently at Northern Illinois (2000-02) and Northern Iowa (1991-99), prior to Evansville - have seen him mold unproven teams into record-setting units, with several seasons spent rebuilding underfunded programs while earning him top honors on the conference and national levels. A lifelong fan of Notre Dame's athletic teams and a former standout centerfielder at Creighton, the Chicago native now tackles a new challenge as he takes over the reins of one of the nation's top baseball programs. Notre Dame owns Division I baseball's fourth-best winning percentage during the current decade (.728; 324-120-3 from 2000-06) and the Irish are one of just 10 teams to advance to the NCAAs every season since 1999.

Schrage [pronunciation rhymes with bag] is highly-regarded as a consummate student of the game, with a vast baseball knowledge contributing to his skills as a developer of talent and teacher of the game. His teams traditionally have been founded on pitching and defense while playing with a scrappy, aggressive approach that has helped build confidence and a winning tradition among former players.

After inheriting an Evansville team that had won only 22 games in 2002, Schrage guided the Aces in making steady strides while building the program's victory total each season: 24-31 in 2003, 28-32 in '04, 35-23 in '05 and most recently a 43-22 mark in 2006 that represents the second-most wins in the program's history. The 45-year-old Schrage ranks second on the Evansville career victories list, at 130-108.

Only 21 teams in all of D-I baseball totaled more wins in 2006 than upstart Evansville, which claimed the MVC regular-season and tournament titles before stunning double-digit NCAA regional wins over host Virginia and an NCAA-veteran South Carolina squad. It marked the first time Evansville ever had reached an NCAA regional title game and was just the third NCAA trip in the program's history.

Evansville's performance at the 2006 MVC Tournament included a key 14-3 victory over homestanding Wichita State. The strong season turned in by the Aces caused longtime Wichita State coach Gene Stephenson to concede in his postgame comments that Evansville had become the "class" of the MVC.

Four seasons at Evansville have prepared Schrage for the high level of academic expectations that exist at Notre Dame. Evansville - a private liberal-arts university with an enrollment of only 2,500 - is rated among the top schools in the Midwest and is noted for selective admissions criteria. Schrage showed the ability at Evansville to recruit academic-minded players who went on to excel at the collegiate level. Most notably, catcher Gabe Bauer and pitcher Zach Grage received the Missouri Valley Conference's prestigious Presidents' Award, presented to graduating seniors with grade-point averages of 3.8 and higher.

Bauer - who later was accepted to Notre Dame's accelerated master's in accountancy program - graduated with a 3.91 cumulative GPA as an accounting major while Grage compiled a 3.82 GPA en route to receiving his degree in secondary education. Bauer earlier joined teammates Adam Rogers (3.46; sport studies/management), Robbie Minor (3.29; accounting) and Kasey Wahl (3.04; athletic training) in receiving MVC Scholar-Athlete honors, with the four players representing the most from any MVC baseball team. Two others, Mitch Prout (3.40; accounting) and Kyle Smith (3.15; sport studies/management), earned honorable mention MVC Scholar-Athlete status.

Schrage is one of just five coaches in the history of Missouri Valley Conference baseball who have been named MVC coach of the year three or more times, with only WSU's Stephenson (11) and former Southern Illinois coach "Itchy" Jones (4) receiving that honor more times than Schrage. Longtime Missouri State skipper Keith Guttin and the recently-retired Bob Warn of Indiana State also have been three-time MVC coaches of the year.

The MVC rates as one of the nation's top college baseball leagues, led by perennial national power Wichita State, Missouri State - which advanced to the 2003 College World Series (as Southwest Missouri State) - and Schrage's alma mater Creighton. During the past four years alone (2003-06), four different MVC teams have advanced to the NCAAs and all nine current MVC teams have made NCAA appearances.

There are nearly 300 teams (293) currently competing in D-I baseball but only a small portion -roughly 10 percent (33 teams) - have totaled more victories in the past two seasons ('05-'06) than Evansville's 78. Notre Dame's 83 wins from 2005-06 are 20th-most in the nation during that two-year span.

Schrage's teams have relied on a recipe for success that mirrors recent Notre Dame teams. His Evansville squads were built around the traditional core of pitching and defense, yielding a 3.39 staff ERA and .975 team fielding percentage in 2006 that both ranked 12th in the final NCAA rankings. Cal State Fullerton was the only other team in the nation ranked among the top-12 in both pitching (1st) and defense (6th) for 2006. Notre Dame was one of eight teams among the national top-25 in 2006 for both pitching (21st) and fielding (23rd).

Several Evansville players ranked among 2006 national leaders. Ben Norton (9-3) finished one victory outside the top-50 on the national wins list (68th) while fellow junior righthander Matt Brinkmann ended up just outside the nation's top-100 ERA leaders (110th; 2.97). Wahl, a junior first baseman, batted .371 to nearly finish among the nation's top-100 hitters (114th) while sophomore outfielder Jim Viscomi fueled the running game, ranking 10th nationally with 34 stolen bases.

The Aces' stellar middle infield in 2006 included a second baseman (Kyle Smith) who played errorfree over the final 42 games of the season and a slick-fielding shortstop (Robbie Minor) who is rated the MVC's top player at his position for 2007.

Evansville's emergence as the class of the conference can be seen in both its championship finishes and statistical leaders. In 2006 MVC play, Evansville led the league in batting (.295) and fielding (.978; 20 errors in 24 games) while ranking second with a 3.33 league ERA. The Aces also led the MVC during 2006 league play with .420 slugging and 144 runs while the pitching staff yielded the fewest walks (51) and wild pitches (7) and second fewest home runs (9) during MVC games.

Other noteworthy stats for Evansville in 2006 MVC games included ranking second in on-base percentage (.370) and stolen bases (29), plus third in home runs (14), doubles (42) and low opponent batting (.256). The Aces also led the conference in overall ERA (3.39) and fielding (3.39) while ranking second in on-base (.370), runs (395), stolen bases (98), walks drawn (236), sacrifice bunts (70) and opponent batting (.256).

Schrage earned his third career Missouri Valley Conference coach-of-the-year honor in 2006, after guiding Evansville to the first MVC title in the program's history. The Aces then had a memorable third day at the NCAA Charlottesville Regional, knocking off the host team Virginia in a 15-4 elimination game and coming back to stay alive with a similar 15-5 win over South Carolina. That game saw Evansville stunningly send 18 men to the plate while scoring 12 times in the third inning - but the Gamecocks won the decisive game, 5-1.

Schrage earlier helped develop Evansville's first MVC batting champ (Luke Miller, in 2003) and first MVC newcomers of the year (Cody Strait in '04; Ben Norton in '06). His Evansville players combined for two Freshman All-America honors, a first team Summer All-America honor and 17 spots on the all-MVC team (including six in 2006).

Schrage's 20th season as a college head coach in 2007 will correspond with the 115th season of Notre Dame baseball, as he becomes just the sixth individual to lead the Irish baseball program since the mid-1930s.

Schrage came to Evansville after a three-year stint at Northern Illinois, where he took a team that was 4-51 the year prior to his 2000 arrival and helped transform it into a Mid-American Conference Tournament team. Virtually the same Northern Illinois team that won four games in 1999 rebounded to win 24 in 2000, prompting Collegiate Baseball magazine to recognize Schrage as runnerup for its 2000 national coach-of-the-year award. Baseball America also took notice, selecting Schrage as one of the nation's "top-10 up-and-coming coaches."

Prior to his three years at Northern Illinois,Schrage spent nine seasons as head coach at Northern Iowa. He took a UNI program that had only one scholarship in his first season (1991) and transformed it into a perennial contender in the MVC. Schrage was named Missouri Valley Conference coach of the year in 1995 and again in '97, when he guided the Panthers to one of the best marks in school history at 32-23.

Since 1991, Schrage has developed 53 all-conference selections and 23 players who have moved on to professional baseball - most notably first baseman Erik Lis, a ninth-round selection of the Minnesota Twins in 2005. He has coached eight Freshman All-Americans and also tutored the 1997 MVC player of the year, Brian Jergenson. Schrage's standout playing career at Creighton included all-MVC honors in 1982, after leading the conference with a .400 batting average. He then raised that mark to .433 as a senior and received 1983 CoSIDA Academic All-America honors. Schrage is the only individual to gain all-MVC baseball accolades as a player and later earn the league's coach-of-the-year honor.

Former Notre Dame head coach Paul Mainieri gave Schrage his first job in coaching when he hired him to his 1984 staff at St. Thomas University (located in Miami and also known as Biscayne College). Schrage spent the 1983-84 season as a graduate assistant at Biscayne/St. Thomas before returning to Creighton to work two seasons ('84 and '85) with current Chicago Cubs general manager Jim Hendry, who ultimately coached the Bluejays to the 1991 College World Series. Schrage was instrumental in signing the 1985 Creighton recruiting class that featured three future professional players and was rated fifth-best in the nation.

Schrage coached overseas in 1987-88 with the Mt. Gravatt Eagles Club in Brisbane, Australia, and returned to direct the baseball team at Waldorf Junior College (now a four-year college, in Forest City, Iowa) for three seasons (1988-90) before taking over at Northern Iowa.

A two-sport standout in baseball and basketball at Chicago's Fenwick High School - where his basketball teammates included the son of former Notre Dame football Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Lattner - Schrage later received his bachelor of science degree in business administration from Creighton ('83) and a master's in sports administration from Biscayne/St. Thomas.

His father Jack Schrage was a high school football player at Quincy (Ill.) Notre Dame High School and later served in the Korean War before marrying his wife Carolyn, a professional dancer in Las Vegas and later at the Palmer House in downtown Chicago. Schrage's younger brother, Greg, played basketball and baseball at Loras College in the mid-1990s (when current Notre Dame athletics director Kevin White was the Loras AD) and finished his baseball career in South Carolina, at Francis Marion.

Schrage and his wife Jody - who passed away on Jan. 9, 2007, following a brief battle with cancer - met during their days as student-athletes at Creighton. A standout prep softball player who was inducted into the Iowa High School Hall of Fame, the future Jody Schrage was a leading player for the Creighton softball teams that played in three straight College World Series (1980-82). She later coached high school softball in Iowa while her husband was directing the baseball team at UNI.

The Schrage daughters - Kaitlyn (16) and Brianne (13) - have followed in their parents' footsteps, as Kaity is a volleyball and softball player while Bri plays basketball and softball. Each also is musically inclined, as Kaity plays the clarinet and Bri the violin