Union University Athletics

Jimmy McDonald joined the Union University baseball staff in August 2017 to serve as the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator for head coach Lee Driggers. He arrived having spent time coaching at NCAA DI Dartmouth College in the Ivy League, Manhattan Christian College, and Grace University.
 
McDonald spent the 2016-17 season as an assistant baseball coach at NCAA D1 Dartmouth College in the Ivy League Conference. Dartmouth posted impressive wins in defeating the top-25 ranked University of Miami 2-of-3 games and defeating top-25 University of Central Florida 2-of-3 games. Other Dartmouth victories against competition included wins over Boston College, The Citadel, and all Ivy League schools including the Ivy League Champion Yale University. Under direction of Head Coach Bob Whalen McDonald helped run the daily operations of a pitching staff that had two pitchers drafted in the top 20 rounds of the 2017 MLB Draft, one was named the 2017 Ivy League Pitcher of the Year.
 
McDonald was named the Head Baseball Coach at Manhattan Christian College in Manhattan, Kansas during the summer of 2015 and inherited a 0-42 team with only three players returning from the 2015 season. However, after a successful recruiting effort that led up to the 2016 season McDonald engineered a turnaround for the MCC baseball program in one season when he guided the Thunder to a 19-21 mark with more than half of those losses coming by one or two runs. 
 
During the 2014 season McDonald served as the pitching coach and recruiting coordinator at Grace University in Omaha, Nebraska under former Major League Baseball hitting coach Thad Bosley, a 14-year veteran of MLB and former hitting coach for the Texas Rangers and Oakland Athletics. Under McDonald’s service, Grace posted a 27-17 record in the school's inaugural season. McDonald guided the pitching staff to an impressive 3.49 ERA.
 
Coach McDonald is a native of Omaha, Nebraska and is a 2013 graduate of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in communication. McDonald pitched for coach Lee Driggers where he helped lead the Thunder to their first ever NCAA Division III top-25 ranking and best record in school history in 2010. Throughout his collegiate career he played two summers for Athletes in Action in the New York Collegiate League and the Great Lakes Collegiate League and has playing and coaching experience in the Dominican Republic with SCORE International.
 
McDonald comes from a baseball family where his father coached under legendary Fellowship of Christian Athletes coach Jerry Kindall at the University of Arizona in 1975-76 when Arizona won the NCAA Division I National Championship, at the College World Series in Omaha.
 
Coach McDonald is a Member of the American Baseball Coaches Association.