PNC Names Director of Athletics and Head Baseball Coach

John Weber director of athletics and head baseball coach Download photo here.

WESTVILLE – Purdue University North Central recently announced the hiring of John Weber as the director of athletics and head baseball coach.

For the past six years Weber was the sports information director and head baseball coach at Lakeland College in Sheboygan, Wisc.

Weber assumes leadership of a Panther baseball team that concluded a landmark 2004 season by rewriting the team and athletic department record books. The Panthers finished 2004 with a 24-13-1 overall record and was regionally ranked twice, finishing fifth in the final rankings. The team made its first appearance in a CCAC tournament and set an athletic department record by placing four players on the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference (CCAC) All-Conference Team; two players were named NAIA Region VII Academic Scholars and one player was on the NAIA All-Region VII team.

PNC finished third in CCAC the season’s end and earned the right to host the CCAC Tournament. The team swept the tournament and went on to its first appearance in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) Region VII tournament.

During the season, PNC finished first in the CCAC in team batting average, .370; slugging percentage, .516; stolen bases and homeruns and finished third in team pitching with a 4.20 ERA. All are school records.

Weber comes to PNC after being the most successful coach in the history of Lakeland College in any sport. His teams won Lake Michigan Conference titles the last four years and earned the program’s first NCAA tournament appearances in 2002 and 2003. Lakeland College played in the 2002 Division III College World Series, finishing fifth in the nation, becoming the smallest school to make a Division III CWS appearance. He is Lakeland’s all-time victories leader with the highest winning percentage in the program’s history. His teams set every team and individual mark, including wins in a season (three times) and were nationally ranked several times, reaching fifth in 2002 and a preseason high of 17th in 2003. The team was consistently regionally ranked, reaching first in 2002. He coached 46 All-Conference selections at Lakeland, including three Players of the Year.

Weber was named Lake Michigan Conference Coach of the Year the past four seasons, was 2002 Midwest Regional Coach of the Year, the 2002 Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association College Coach of the Year and was a featured speaker at the 2004 American Baseball Coaches Association convention in San Antonio, Texas.

Off the field, Weber’s teams were equally successful, with nearly 50 Academic All-Conference selections and a team GPA of almost 3.0.

Prior to Lakeland, Weber was the associate head coach at Lewis University, in Romeoville, Ill. In 1998 the team’s pitchers had the second-best ERA in the 12-team Great Lakes Valley Conference.

Six of Weber’s former assistant coaches are now head coaches at the collegiate level, while 10 former players were either drafted or signed to professional contracts.

Weber attended Lewis University on a baseball scholarship as a right-handed pitcher and graduated in 1993 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing. He earned his master’s degree in management and organizational behavior in 1996 from Benedictine University.

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