The Hart of the Pack

Chris Hart has been around sports his entire life.

Starting with Hart’s grandfather, Dave Hart, who played football, then shifted into athletic administration with athletic director stints at Louisville and Missouri prior to becoming the commissioner of the Southern Conference, the lineage is strong. The Hart family is a known commodity in intercollegiate athletics.

Hart is the nephew of Dave Hart Jr., who was also an athletic director locally at East Carolina and at Florida State – a school that would factor prominently in the lives of the Hart family. Dave Hart Jr’s son, Rick, is now the athletic director at ACC newcomer SMU.

Hart’s father Dick played football at West Virginia under Bobby Bowden and his brother Dickie played baseball at Florida Atlantic University.

It was not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘what’ for Chris Hart. What sport would tug at his heart most, and then what path in sports would he choose in life?

Finding his calling

To get to the beginning, it might be easier to start with when Hart began showing an interest in sports. It is one of the earliest memories of his life. 

“I was three years old,” Hart said. “The first time I could walk and do anything, it was all baseball,”

Why baseball instead of other sports out there, especially in a family that appreciates everything sports have to offer?

“I'm not sure,” Hart said. “It could be the fact that we lived in Florida. I do not think my dad intentionally steered us away from football, but my brother and I both were into baseball from the time we were little. We played every sport growing up, but baseball was what we loved.”

Once Hart got to high school, he started focusing on honing his craft on the baseball diamond.

The dividends arrived at once. Ability, knowledge, and passion connected, and Hart could tell early on in his high school career that baseball was going to be more than a passing love.

“I was probably one of the better players on my team in my freshman year in high school,” Hart said. “I thought to myself that I could (play college ball). Baseball was clearly what I loved the most, but it was also a situation where I felt like I had a chance to do something with it.”

After high school, Hart joined the baseball program at Florida State and played for Mike Martin. The Seminoles were one of the best teams in the nation on an annual basis. High-level baseball was a given until tragedy struck Hart.

Early in his sophomore season, Hart suffered a broken leg and missed the rest of the campaign. While he was granted a fifth season to compete at the college level and would contribute to great FSU teams during the remainder of his playing career, including the 1999 national runner-up squad, it was during his recovery that Hart started looking long-term beyond just playing ball.

“It was near the beginning of my sophomore year; I was the starting catcher,” Hart said. “I broke my leg around eight games in. I would say somewhere in my last three years of college is where I started thinking I wanted to coach, and that is what I wanted to do. By the time I was a senior, that is a hundred percent what I wanted to do. I knew that was what I wanted to do. I would say it started to sneak in the back of your mind that had somewhere around that 2000, 2001 range, while I was hurt, this is what I want to do.”

Hart’s life would then enter its next phase. 

Networking would help get Hart on his path, his experiences in life would become a resource to help others, and personal discovery would lead the young college graduate to discover a paradise that he never realized existed for him.

FSU Athletics

The (Mike) Bell tolls for Hart

Mike Bell played baseball at and graduated from Florida State. Bell was not with the Seminoles while Hart was there; their paths did not cross in college, but the link with FSU was the initial basis for a friendship. 

The pair met on the coaching and recruiting circuit around 20 years ago. Hart began his coaching career at St. Petersburg College following his graduation from FSU. During the summer of 2004, Hart guided the Loudoun Rangers of the Shenandoah Valley League, coaching players from several major conferences in the wood bat league. That led to his first job at NC State.

Bell sees the skills Hart learned in Tallahassee as a college player, but there are also personal traits that give his coaching career at NC State an added boost.

“I think the first and the most important thing, as we all got into this industry, was the ability to recruit at a high level,” Bell said. “The way that we were all taught a lot of things in Tallahassee, applying those things, the importance parts of the game and that development process, when you combine his knack, his hunger, his eye for talent, his ability to recruit with that background with those, those are dangerous combinations.”

In 2005, Bell alerted Hart that there were openings at NC State.

Hart was excited, and perhaps a little desperate. He knew he wanted to coach, and he had NCSU pegged as the perfect place to kickstart that part of his baseball journey.

And Hart was willing to use every bit of leverage he could muster to get the attention of NC State head coach Elliott Avent. (Former NC State guard) Eddie Biedenbach was one of the many folks Hart enlisted to pepper Avent for an interview.

“Chris Hart was hired because of Eddie Biedenbach,” Avent said. “Eddie called me, and he said, ‘Hey, Elliott, a young man is going to send his resume to you. I know you have a director of baseball operations job open. I just figured it would be a great favor to me if you gave an interview.’

“His family is an unbelievable sports family. His grandfather was a great man in the sports business, collegiate sports business. He had done so many great things. I'm not asking you to hire him, he said, but when you hire him, you will have hired a person that I guarantee you has great ethics, and all the things that you're looking for to hire.”

The door was open. Hart impressed Avent enough to get his big break.

The first impression does not always last, but shortly into his coaching tenure at NC State, Hart approached Avent with a stunning offer that ultimately upped his respect for the young coach. 

While Hart was settling into his new role, there was one thing missing: instruction on the field. In other words, Hart did not feel like his new job allowed him to do what he set out to do, which was to connect with kids and teach the sport of baseball.

“He came to me one day and he said, ‘Coach, I love being here, but I don't want to be the director of operations anymore, I want to be a volunteer,” Avent recalled. “I said, ‘Well, Chris, there is no money in being a volunteer. There is no money, there are no benefits.’ He said, ‘I want to coach,’ so he gave up his salary and benefits to be the volunteer coach. I had already seen some of it before, but that was the day he opened my eyes about who he was.”  

NC State Baseball

Left: Chris Hart, Right: Pittsburgh head coach Mike Bell

Embracing Home

Hart soon discovered that NC State and the city of Raleigh were more than launching pads for his coaching career. It was his landing spot.

It was his home.

That epiphany occurred not exclusively while working within the context of his surroundings. It was a realization that became cemented in his mind once he started to receive offers to leave.

Several schools contacted Hart unsolicited about taking his coaching talents elsewhere. Programs with heritage, resources, and money came calling. Head coaching feelers were also put out by mid-majors.

Hart had his pick of the litter. He just could not muster the inner courage to leave. He loved NC State and his job too much.

“I grew up in Florida, I played at Florida State,” Hart said. “In my mind, when I was hired, I was saying to myself, ‘this will get me in the door and then I can get back to Florida.’ Now I feel the complete opposite. I do not ever want to go back to Florida or go anywhere else.”

NC State Baseball

Growing in his role

In 2010, Avent decided to detach from micromanaging the baseball program. The veteran head coach felt that he would be the best version of himself in the dugout and clubhouse if he did not have to worry about all the small details.

To get to that spot meant delegating responsibilities to someone he could trust. After several years in the program and added duties to his job each season, Avent knew Hart was the man for the task.

“He's turned down so many jobs, turned down Vanderbilt and LSU, great programs can pick your recruits,” Avent said. “You do not have to beat your head against a wall to try to get kids. You have money with which to get them, and you are playing in an unbelievable stadium, in an unbelievable conference, with probably double the salary he made here, if not more, and he chose to stay here because he loves NC State.

“For you to delegate that responsibility to somebody, that person must earn the right to do that job. For a guy that did not know how to delegate, people like Chris Hart taught me how to delegate, because they do things with the care that you do it with, with the thought that you do it with. He lives and eats and drinks this sport of baseball, for winning, for how much he cares about these players, how much he cares about their success, their future.”

Another skill that earned Avent’s trust was Hart’s ability to recruit.

In 2009, the Wolfpack slipped to a losing record. In the 15 seasons since (not including the COVID year of 2020), the Wolfpack has reached the NCAA Tournament 13 times. Once a program with only one College World Series appearance, the Wolfpack has reached Omaha three times in the previous 11 years, and twice in the last four campaigns.

Avent made his trust in Hart clear when his associate head coach contacted him during the recruitment of NC State great Trea Turner.

“He used to ask me a lot of questions when he was doing all the recruiting,” Avent said. “He was on the road a lot, and I was not. In recruiting Trea Turner, when we first signed him, it was to another great scholarship, and he was out of state. Then Turner blew up that summer because Chris Hart figured out who Trea Turner was before anybody else did.

“He called me saying, ‘Hey, the Pittsburgh Pirates are all over Trea this summer. They are going to tease him with money in the draft. Can we up his scholarship?’ That is the only time I have given him advice on recruiting.

“I said, ‘It is hard to make the right decision in recruiting. You are going to make mistakes. Just always make it on the side of talent and do not make it on the side of character. Do not make that mistake,’ and that is what he did.

“The other thing I told him when he was calling me about Trea Turner, I said, ‘Chris, you are out there seeing him. You have carte blanche on the money. The money is yours. I do not ever want to know what you signed a guy for. Do not ask me again. You got the money, you got eyes on that player, you know what we need, and you make those decisions.’”  

NC State has not looked back. With Hart as the associate head coach, the Wolfpack has 16 straight winning seasons in baseball.

NC State Baseball

“I think stability is huge in what we do,” Mike Bell said. “You do not see that nowadays. Stability and having that right-hand man that can do so many things from the recruiting side of it, the offensive development side of it, but really, it takes his time to understand the whole complexity of the game. This is not a knock on the assistants out there, I do not think there is a more valuable one. The stability that Chris has provided NC State, and he has provided Elliot, that program, from the outside looking in, I think he has held that program together.”

The immediate goal for Hart is to win a national title. He is confident that he is in the place to do that. For him, it starts with making Omaha a consistent destination.

“I do not want to put things on t-shirts about it or anything like that, but we must believe that we can go to Ohama,” Hart said. “We must believe we can win a national championship. I do not know if it will ever get to you if you do not believe it, and you do not think it, and you do not have that vision.

“I think that the 2012 freshman group came here for one reason: to go to Omaha. We talked about the recruiting process; we talked about it the entire time with Trea, Carlos, and Brett (Austin). They knew why they were coming here. It was to go to Omaha, and so from the get-go, that group was like, we are doing it, we are going.

“Once you kick that door down, then it becomes more of the kids believing it a little bit more and a little bit more. It is getting to the point now where it does not mean you are going to go to Omaha every year, but they believe that this is where this program’s standards kind of set. In 2021, we had a good shot to win that thing. Every time you do it, and you go a little closer, it is a little bit more of a feeling of ‘Hey, we can win this whole thing. We are a good enough program to do that.’”

Hart has now spent two decades in Raleigh, but his college coaching career potentially has another two decades to go. While he may have a few more seasons at the helm before retirement, Avent will not be at NC State forever.

The natural inclination would be bumping Hart up to the job he has wanted, prepared for, and simulated in several ways for the past 15 years, but nothing is promised.

The young man who came to NC State not long after graduating from college is now a veteran coach with a newborn son. Hart has spent most of his life in Raleigh. He is working hard to stay for the rest of his career.

“I've made it very clear to our administration that this is where I want to be,” Hart said. “I mean, I have made it abundantly clear. Within the last couple of years, there have been no guarantees or anything like that. There is nothing in writing or anything, but at the end of the day, the reality is this is where I want to be.

“I want to stay here. I am going to stay here, and I am going to see it through. I want that opportunity. I want that chance.”

NC State Baseball