The Baseball Team in the Sky calls Chuck Hartman home:High Point Mourns Loss of Former Baseball Coach Hartman

High Point Mourns Loss of Former Baseball Coach Hartman
from High Point University Athletics:

The great baseball team upstairs picked up another coach yesterday evening (Nov. 2) when collegiate baseball coaching legend and former High Point University baseball coach Chuck Hartman was called home.

Hartman arrived at High Point in 1958 as a tennis and basketball coach and was named the head baseball coach before the 1960 season. It took him until his third season in 1963 to achieve a winning record with the Panthers, but once he did, all but one season after ended with a winning record for the Purple and White. He won 10 Conference Carolinas Championships, five District 26 Championships, and two Area Championships at High Point over 19 seasons, compiling a 483-225 record – still HPU’s winningest coach.

His teams were ranked nationally every year from 1972 to 1978, achieving a ranking as high as fifth in 1972 and 1974. He was the Conference Carolinas Coach of the Year five times and NAIA District 26 Coach of the Year six times, as well as being named the 1976 Area Coach of the Year. In 1975 he led the Panthers to a 42-6 record, which still to this day holds the program record for wins in a season. The 1975 season also saw the dominance of “Big O”, Otis Foster, the All-American that Hartman recruited to play for High Point. Foster hit .476 that season with 76 RBIs and 30 home runs, all still HPU records. He was taken in the first round of the 1975 MLB draft by the Boston Red Sox and remains High Point’s only first-round draft pick.

“Coach Hartman was a legend in the baseball community and had an amazing track record of success over his 47-year career. He set the foundation for HPU Baseball and impacted the High Point community in countless ways,” current baseball head coach Craig Cozart said of the former coach. “As extraordinary as he was as a baseball coach, he was even more amazing off the field. He impacted everyone around him in a positive manner and taught his players to be upstanding citizens. I am proud to have had the privilege of calling Coach Hartman my friend. He lived a great life and will be sorely missed by all that knew him.”

Hartman left High Point prior to the 1979 season to coach at Virginia Tech where he remained for 28 seasons before retiring in 2006. He compiled a 961-591-8 record with the Hokies, the most of any coach in any sport at the university. He retired with a lifetime record of 1,444-816-8 record to place fourth in all-time wins among Division I baseball coaches. He currently sits 11th among all collegiate baseball coaches.

In a 2008 ceremony, the number one was retired for Hartman, the same number he donned in Blacksburg and one of the many numbers he wore as the head coach of the Panthers. His number currently sits on the fence at Williard Stadium in left-center field, next to Foster’s 18 as the only two numbers retired by the program. Hartman was enshrined in the High Point University Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017, one of eight different Hall of Fames Hartman was elected to. He is also a member of the Gaston (N.C.) County Hall of Fame (1979), NAIA Hall of Fame (1989), Salem-Roanoke Baseball Hall of Fame (1996), Virginia Tech Sports Hall of Fame (2002), ABCA Hall of Fame (2004), Guilford Country Hall of Fame (2011), and the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame (2018).