K-State head baseball coach Pete Hughes announced Thursday that he has completed his staff with the hiring of Ryan Connolly as director of baseball operations while retaining Shane Conlon as volunteer assistant coach and naming Colin Greaser as director of player and program development. This is according to a release from K-State.
The trio join assistant coaches Buck Taylor and Austin Wates, who were hired in June.
As the director of baseball operations, Connolly will spearhead the baseball program’s recruiting efforts as well as manage the team’s travel and summer camps.
Connolly comes to K-State after serving as the director of centralized recruiting for Virginia Tech Athletics for the 2017-18 season, where he spent the previous two seasons as an assistant baseball coach under former Hokies head coach Patrick Mason.
Connolly spent two seasons with Hughes at Oklahoma as the volunteer assistant coach and recruiting coordinator, leading the Sooners to the No. 1-ranked recruiting class in the Big 12 in 2015. Prior to his time at OU, he was an assistant at Radford and was the volunteer assistant for two seasons with Hughes at Virginia Tech.
A native of Binghamton, New York, Connolly was a four-year monogram winner at Notre Dame, where he served as team captain his junior and senior seasons. The infielder/outfielder hit .324 with four homers in his final season with the Fighting Irish.
Conlon, one of the most decorated players in K-State history, has served as the volunteer assistant and first base coach the past two seasons for K-State. The former Wildcat standout has primarily worked with the team’s infielders while also coordinating K-State baseball youth camps.
Conlon was a part of K-State’s 2013 Big 12 championship team that reached the Corvallis Super Regional. That season, he was a unanimous all-Big 12 first team selection after hitting .341 with a .430 on-base percentage. Conlon was tied for the team lead with seven homers and finished third in the Big 12 with 125 total bases, starting all but one of the Cats’ 64 games in 2013 at first base.
Following K-State’s historic 2013 season, Conlon was taken in the 21st round of the MLB First-Year Player Draft by the Kansas City Royals but elected to return to K-State. After his senior season in 2015 and graduating with a degree in social sciences, he was taken by the Oakland A’s in the 34th round and played one season in the organization, hitting .327 with 18 runs batted in with the Arizona League Athletics.
Greaser, who served as K-State director of baseball operations the last two years, is taking on a revised role with his responsibilities including managing the team’s equipment, budget, student-athlete services as well as the Wildcats’ home, Tointon Family Stadium.
Prior to his appointment with K-State baseball in 2016, Greaser spent two years as assistant equipment manager for the K-State football program.
