Baseball
- Title:
- Assistant Coach
- Email:
- d.lawn@TCU.edu
TCU baseball head coach Kirk Saarloos has announced the addition of Dave Lawn to the coaching staff in the summer of 2023. The longtime college baseball coach, entering his second season at TCU, serves as the pitching coach.
Lawn made his way to Fort Worth after spending eight years at Arizona. In his time with the Wildcats, he worked under two head coaches, serving as the associate head coach for his last two seasons in the program.
A veteran coach among the college ranks, Lawn has 38 years of coaching experience dating back to his first job as the pitching coach at Contra Costa College in 1986. He spent two seasons with the Comets before moving on to be the graduate assistant at Nevada in 1988. He spent two seasons with the Wolf Pack and before heading to Cal
Lawn went on to spend 10 seasons at Cal (1991-00), seven at USC (2001-07) and two more at Nevada (2014-15). Additionally, Lawn spent part of the 2013 season as Director of Player Development at Cal State Fullerton. He made his way to Tucson and the Wildcats in 2015. From 2007-11, Lawn was the head coach at Servite High School in Anaheim, Calif.
Under Lawn’s guidance, 42 players have gone on to play Major League Baseball, including Mark Prior, the 2001 Golden Spikes Award winner from USC. Lawn’s teams have four times earned trips to the College World Series, six times played in the NCAA Super Regionals and 12 times earned NCAA Regional berths. Additionally, his clubs have won three Pac-12 Championships, one Big West title and one Mountain West regular season championship.
Lawn has mentored 37 All-Americans and 67 all-conference selections. Among them, five were named conference Pitchers of the Year, three conference Players of the Year, three conference Freshmen of the Year, one USA Baseball Golden Spikes Award winner and one National Freshman of the Year. Seventeen players have earned a spot on a USA Baseball National Team roster. He has produced 102 draft picks, including five first round selections.
In his first season at TCU, he mentored a pair of All-Americans in Ben Abeldt and Payton Tolle. Abeldt earned a spot on the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team, while Tolle was named the Big 12 Pitcher and Newcomer of the Year in addition to being drafted 50th overall by Boston. He guided a pitching staff that produced 606 strikeouts, tied for the second-most in program history, and set a school record with 11.47 K/9. All four players drafted - Tolle, Caedmon Parker, Zachary Cawyer and Kyle Ayers, were pitchers.
While at Arizona, the Wildcats posted a 280-165 (.629) record. In five of his eight seasons at Arizona, Lawn served as the pitching coach. He mentored five all-conference performers and one All-American. Thirteen Wildcat pitchers have been selected in the MLB Draft, including seven in the first 10 rounds.
Prior to Arizona, Lawn spent two seasons at Nevada. He helped to guide the Wolf Pack to a 72-42 record. In 2015, Nevada posted a 41-15 record and captured the school’s first-ever Mountain West title with a 22-6 mark in league play. The Wolf Pack was ranked in the top 25 for much of the year. The 41 overall wins ranked second in program history.
Under his tutelage, Nevada pitchers claimed numerous high-profile awards in 2015, as Trenton Brooks was named Mountain West Tony Gwynn Player of the Year, Christian Stolo was named the MW Pitcher of the Year, while Cal Stevenson was named MW Co-Freshman of the Year and was a Louisville Slugger freshman All-America.
In Lawn’s first season as Nevada’s full-time pitching coach, the Wolf Pack posted a 31-win season and a third place finish in the Mountain West Tournament. Five members of the team earned all-conference accolades.
Prior to his return to Nevada, Lawn spent seven seasons at USC, serving as the Trojans’ pitching coach and recruiting coordinator. He coached two Pac-12 Pitchers of the Year in Prior and Ian Kennedy (Drafted by Yankees in 2006). USC reached the 2001 College World Series, advanced to three Super Regionals and won the Pac-12 championship in 2001 and 2002. In 2001, USC pitcher Rik Currier set the Pac-12 record for career strikeouts, which would later be broken by Tim Lincecum.
Before arriving in Southern California, Lawn spent 10 years in the Bay Area, serving as California’s pitching coach and recruiting coordinator for five seasons before being promoted to associate head coach for the remaining five years. In Lawn’s first season with Cal in 1991, the Golden Bears went 37-27 after posting just 18 wins the year prior. The following year, Lawn helped take Cal to the College World Series. One of Lawn’s Cal pitchers - LHP Nate Brown - led the nation in strikeouts per nine innings in 1993. In 1994, Cal’s Bobby Kahlon was named Pac-12 Pitcher of the Year under Lawn’s guidance. Lawn also helped bring a pair of top 30 recruiting classes to Cal, including freshman All-American Xavier Nady, a first round MLB draft pick.
Lawn served as the Director of Athletics at JSerra Catholic High School in San Juan Capistrano, Calif. He also spent four seasons as the head baseball coach at Servite High School in Anaheim, Calif., from 2007-11, where 12 of his players earned Division I scholarships.
Lawn received his Bachelor’s degree in political science from San Francisco State in 1987 and pitched one year at UC Santa Barbara before suffering a career-ending arm injury. He was the team captain of the 1986 team at UCSB that won the Pacific Coast Athletic Association championship. He was also drafted twice professionally in 1984 by the Minnesota Twins in the second round and by the Texas Rangers in the third round of the secondary draft.
Dave and his wife Stacey have three children; Mackenzie, Michael and Matthew.
