The National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association (NCBWA) has announced today that its inaugural National Coach of the Year Award will go to Fresno State skipper Mike Batesole.

The award, which was voted on by the NCBWA Board of Directors, was chosen from a list that included all Division I Conference Coaches of the Year.

Batesole has led the Bulldogs (42-29) to their College World Series since 1991 and guided Fresno State to Omaha as the first No. 4 seed to advance to the CWS since the 64-team format was introduced in 1999.

“This is quite an honor,” said Batesole, who along with his team arrived in Omaha early Thursday morning to prepare for the College World Series. “Achieving what this team has achieved to this point this is a culmination of a great administration, alumni base, the Dugout Club, a fantastic Fresno community that has no limit to its support of our program. I’m blessed to have the hardest working assistant coaches I have been associated with, and an amazingly understanding family at home. We could not be more proud of our players and specifically the leadership of our eight seniors who will all graduate on time or in their ninth semester. Everyone associated with our program deserves the credit for awards like these.”

He earned Western Athletic Conference Coach of the Year honors for the first time after Fresno State won their third consecutive regular season WAC title and third straight WAC Tournament crown.

The Bulldogs followed that up with a third WAC Tournament Championship in a row and won the Long Beach NCAA Regional with a victory over Long Beach State and two wins over top-10 ranked San Diego.

After losing the opening game of the Tempe Super Regional, Fresno State posted back-to-back wins over No. 3 Arizona State to earn the trip to the CWS.

Batesole is finishing his sixth season at the helm of the Bulldogs. He has a record of 214-163 at Fresno State and ranks third all-time in wins. Batesole also served eight seasons as head coach at Cal State Northridge and owns a career record of 470-321-1 over 13 campaigns.

Six Bulldogs of from the 2008 team were drafted into the Major Leagues and Fresno State swept the WAC awards, as Steve Susdorf was named the WAC Player of the Year, Tanner Scheppers the WAC Pitcher of the Year and Danny Muno was WAC Freshman of the Year.

This is the second national coach of the year award for Batesole in his career. He was honored in 1998 when he was the head coach at Cal State Northridge.

NCBWA membership includes writers, broadcasters and publicists. Designed to promote and publicize college baseball, it is the sport’s only college media-related organization, founded in 1962.

The Bulldogs open the College World Series on Sunday at 11 a.m. PT against Rice at Rosenblatt Stadium. Fresno State’s second game will be Tuesday when the Dogs will play either No. 2 seed North Carolina or No. 7 LSU.