James Ramsey Shares What He Learned From Danny Hall During His Time As A Georgia Tech Assistant

The James Ramsey era of Georgia Tech baseball officially began today. Ramsey was announced last week as the coach who would replace long-time Georgia Tech head coach Danny Hall and this comes after being an assistant and associate head coach under Hall. It was clear in his opening statement how much Hall had meant to Ramsey throughout his career and he spoke at length about it:

"Yeah, I think it's a great question. I mean, I think when you work for legends, I think the one thing that, you know, it's consistency, right? And I think none of these legendary coaches get where they are without having really good people around them. You know, I've been able to tell stories and recruiting about guys that line these walls and just the graphics of times that Coach Hall stuck with them, times that maybe in their career where they weren't living up to expectation and that's the one thing that I think you know he does trust his assistants and that's something that I'm gonna you know want to pride myself on doing as well of giving them opportunities and empower them to take on things that maybe I wanted done the way I want them done but to let them fail I think it comes down to just like the player management piece is if they feel they feel like the head coach has their back. There's nothing that you can't ask them to do that they're not gonna follow in. And I think more than anything, I think it's just the way that, like I said, he took a chance on me that had no previous college coaching experience. Within a short amount of time, thanks to his wife and boys that knew me well enough is to say, "Hey, in my gut, this is the right decision. "I'm not worried about the optics of it." And I think along the know we've worked alongside each other to once again try to bring these coaches on board and we were a really good tag team in recruiting so don't think you won't get pulled back into you know so occasional meetings to let a player know the place they need to attend the next three or four years."

Ramsey also mentioned the support from players and coaches that he has gotten since being named the head coach:

"Yeah, I think the process played out about as well as it could have. I think that's a tribute to all the people that are in this room right now. As a coach, as a coach that wants to be a head coach and wants to go through the process, there's definitely times where, hey, you want guarantees. The thing I've learned through this season is, going out and earning it is that much better. And I think that's something that you can always pass along to the assistants on our staff when they want to be a head coach one day or they want to continue to get elevated in titles. They're going out and earning it and backing it up. I love to tell our players that you can't beg, you can't earn, you can't ask for respect. You've got to go earn it on the field. I think that's the thing that when we earn the respect, I think there's nothing more gratifying than being able to take that trophy at Duke outside the field and take it back to Atlanta."

Hall arrived at Georgia Tech in 1994 and is in his 32nd season as head coach of the Yellow Jackets. He has guided Tech to seven Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season championships, five ACC Tournament titles, 24 NCAA Tournament berths and three College World Series in his first 31 seasons at the helm of the Yellow Jackets. His 1,224 wins at Tech are a school record and he has been named ACC Coach of the Year four times (1997, 2000, 2005 and 2019) and was the Sporting News National Coach of the Year in 1997. Since his arrival on The Flats, a staggering 146 Yellow Jackets have been selected in the Major League Draft a total of 163 times.

In recognition of his astounding accomplishments, Hall was inducted to the ABCA Hall of Fame in 2023 and named an honorary alumnus of Georgia Tech in 2024.

Prior to his arrival at Tech in 1994, Hall was the head coach at Kent State for six seasons (1988-93), where he led the Golden Flashes to four seasons with at least 30 wins, two 40-win campaigns and a pair of Mid-American Conference championships and NCAA Tournament berths. He was named the MAC Coach of the Year in 1992 and ’93.

In seven seasons since Ramsey’s arrival on The Flats as hitting coach in 2019, Georgia Tech leads the ACC in batting average (.308), hits (3,961), doubles (796), on-base percentage (.408), OPS (.918) and sacrifice flies (208), and ranks second in runs (2,937), triples (84), home runs (547), RBI (2,709) and slugging percentage (.510).

Since he took over as the Yellow Jackets’ recruiting coordinator following the 2019 season, Tech has landed four top-5 and five top-10 signing classes, and all six have ranked among the top 20 nationally. The Jackets’ most recent class in 2024 was ranked No. 2 nationally by Perfect Game, the highest-rated class in Tech history.

Under Ramsey’s tutelage, seven Tech hitters have been named all-America and five have earned freshman all-America recognition. He’s also coached three semifinalists for each of college baseball’s premier National Player of the Year awards – the Golden Spikes Award (Kevin Parada – 2022, Drew Burress – 2024 and 2025 and Kyle Lodise – 2025) and the Dick Howser Award (Kyle McCann – 2019, Parada – 2022 and Burress – 2024). Recruited and developed by Ramsey, Burress was named National Freshman of the Year in ’24.

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