Tom Ford concludes Cornell baseball coaching career

2025 marks the end of two long coaching careers at Cornell University. Of course there’s Mike Schafer, the head coach of men’s hockey who retired after 30 years leading his alma mater to countless conference titles and NCAA Tournament appearances. Over on the diamond, another coach is hanging up the cleats after 35 years on East Hill.

May 4 was the 1,295th and final game for Tom Ford coaching the baseball team. He was the head coach of the Big Red from 1991 to 2008 before becoming the associate head coach under Bill Walkenbach and Dan Pepicelli. Cornell has always felt like home since Ford is from nearby Trumansburg. But the players have been the main reason why he’s called Cornell home for over three decades.

“They just really made this such a special experience for me,” Ford said. “They’re just solid people. I would bring my kids up to practice when they were young and they would take them under their wing so it was kind of like I had a family at home and I had a family here, too. The quality of guys that have come and played for us, I think that’s the biggest thing that’s kept me here.”

Since Ford announced his retirement back in December, he’s received a tremendous amount of support with many former players reaching back out to him and giving him their well wishes. As for the current team, they planned something truly special for his final weekend of coaching.

The night before the Big Red’s series finale against Princeton, Ford was waiting around for a team meeting when his whole family came in to surprise him. That’s when Pepicelli told Ford about the Tom Ford “#14 Legacy” Program. Each fall, the coaching staff will pick a player who best personifies a tough mindset and daily dedication to improving to wear the number-14 jersey for the upcoming season. The player will also have his name on the Wall of Honor inside the batting tunnels at Booth Field.

“It really touched me,” Ford said. “It’s just a huge, huge honor that I guess maybe I won’t be forgotten here, but just that idea of someone who thinks that you had something to do with the guys’ work ethic and things like that. It was a surprise and one of the biggest honors I think I’ve ever received.”

Before coming to East Hill, Ford spent 14 years coaching on South Hill for Ithaca College baseball, with 10 of those years as his alma mater’s pitching coach. That overlapped with his high school coaching career, leading Lansing’s football program from 1984 to 1990. It might seem pretty challenging coaching different sports at the same time as well as coaching higher school and college student-athletes, but Ford kept things simple.

“Coaching is coaching, no matter what level you’re on,” Ford said. “It’s just finding what level you want to keep them accountable to achieve. You certainly want to bring the best out of each player, but you got to teach the skills that are going to make that happen. If I’m expecting guys to do something that they’re just not capable of doing and just keep pounding on them, then obviously we’re not going to get too much. Coaching is coaching, but that teaching part of it to get to that level is going to be helpful.”

No matter what sport or what age group, Ford has found the most rewarding thing over his nearly 50 years of coaching is building relationships and watching them improve each and every day.

“To be honest, I always thought—and I still think—I’m just doing my job,” Ford said. “But to think that by doing your job that you had an effect on these young guys, they’re sharper. I don’t care whether it was at Lansing or Ithaca or wherever, but just doing your job the best you can, developing a relationship so you can communicate with them as you’re trying to coach them and just building that is [very rewarding].”

There were plenty of successful achievements across Ford’s extensive coaching career. There was the 2012 Ivy League title at Cornell. There were the two national championships at Ithaca College in 1980 and 1988. There was also getting to a Section IV football championship while at Lansing. But the most lasting memories for Ford are the ones spent in the batting cages.

“The memories I’ve had especially these last 10 years of just being in the cages, hitting with guys and working with them and not talking just about the baseball part of it [but also] talking about what their family is doing and what they’re going to do after they get out of here,” Ford said. “When I look back at those conversations and those interactions, they’re pretty precious memories. But I wouldn’t give back the titles and all that stuff and the wins because we certainly had some good times, had some bad times. But looking back now, we’re all better for it.”