Ex-Cat Jan Weisberg comes to EKU as baseball coach with an uplifting backstory
Jan Weisberg logged into his email box on a Monday morning late in May 2024, and was staggered by what he found.
The previous weekend, Weisberg, the former Kentucky Wildcats baseball player (1991 and ‘92) and assistant coach (1993-2005), had coached Birmingham-Southern to a Division III NCAA Tournament regional championship by defeating Transylvania 5-2 in Lexington.
Back in Birmingham, Weisberg expected to find interview requests from a few local reporters in his inbox.
Instead, “it’s like Washington Post, New York Times. It was ESPN,” Weisberg said. “I’m going, ‘What in the world?’”
On Friday, Weisberg, 56, will make his debut as Eastern Kentucky University head baseball coach when the Colonels open their 2026 season at Alabama State.
Along with a record of 595-253-1 over 19 seasons as a college head coach, Wesiberg also brings to EKU the uplifting backstory of having coached the baseball team of a defunct college to the 2024 NCAA Division III College World Series.
In late March 2024, financial issues at the school led to the announcement that Birmingham-Southern College was shutting down after 168 years of operation.
Serving his 17th season as the Panthers head baseball coach, Weisberg was heartbroken. “It’s one of the hardest days I’ve ever had my life,” he said.
Weisberg and the Birmingham-Southern baseball team would get to finish the 2024 season. So when he met with his shellshocked team on the day the college’s closure was announced, Weisberg said he told his players now was the time they all had to live up to the Birmingham-Southern baseball program’s creed.
“One thing we say to our teams is, ‘There are three things that are either in your life right now or imminently around the corner, and that’s pain, uncertainty and hard work,’” he said. “And I just told them ... ‘They’re all three here at once.”
Weisberg said he promised his players that day that he would help them all find new college homes but also challenged his players to lean on each other and close out that final season of Birmingham-Southern baseball in a way that would do credit to all who had worn the school’s uniform.
“My only mission to them in that locker room that day was, ‘We’re going to finish. Don’t quit,’” Weisberg said.
Down the stretch, the baseball team playing for the defunct college did just enough to earn an NCAA Tournament bid. Once the tourney started, the story of the team that was playing to keep the name of its school alive proved irresistible to the national media.
That’s how Weisberg came to find himself being interviewed on MLB Network, by the NBC Evening News with Lester Holt and by ESPN.com’s Jeff Passan, as well as appearing on a podcast with Atlanta Braves legend Chipper Jones.
“It was nuts,” Weisberg said.
In the Hollywood version, Birmingham-Southern would have won the College World Series on a walk-off homer. Here in the real world, the Panthers were eliminated one win short of the semifinal round.
Still, there was an ending worthy of a movie treatment. Offered a chance by the NCAA to fly home from Eastlake, Ohio, to Birmingham, the Panthers players chose instead to bus home, the roughly 12-hour trip allowing them to prolong their time together and the existence of their baseball program.
“I just don’t think they were ready to just get on a plane and let it be done in two hours,” Weisberg said. “It was, like, ‘Let’s enjoy this 12-hour ride home and really spend time together.’ And it was pretty special.”
After the Birmingham-Southern program was shuttered, Weisberg said he was unsure if he wanted to continue coaching. “I told my son, it would have to be someplace great,” he said.
When the Valdosta State job opened, Weisberg thought he had found just that. In 2025, he led the NCAA Division II program to a 30-22 mark. “I was like, ‘OK, this is going to be a great 15 years, and I’ll retire,’” Weisberg said.
Eastern Kentucky University Athletics Director Kyle Moats had other ideas.
After going 38-20 and reaching the ASUN Tournament semifinals in 2022, EKU baseball had suffered through three straight losing seasons, bottoming out at 11-44 in 2025.
So with the Eastern job open, Moats, a former athletics administrator at Kentucky, reached out to Weisberg, whom he knew from UK.
“My first reaction was, ‘Damn it, Kyle, why’d you do this to me?’ Because I was happy (at Valdosta State),” Weisberg said. “But I love challenges, I really do, and this place isn’t broken. It’s not a long-term fix. ... I’d like to retire here, and over the next 12 to 18 years, can I create a little bit of a legacy and leave it better than I found it? That’s the intriguing part.”
However things go for Weisberg at EKU, it seems unlikely there will ever be a moment of greater emotional poignancy than he experienced two years ago coaching the baseball team of a dying Birmingham-Southern to the College World Series.
“I will go to my grave saying it’s the funnest, it’s the most challenging and the hardest coaching I’ve ever had to do because it was so emotionally draining,” Weisberg said. “But it’s what I’m most proud of, because I got a group of guys that could have gone one direction, and we went the same direction.”
