Playing baseball at East Carolina is becoming more rewarding financially as college sports moves into revenue sharing and more scholarships.

ECU coach Cliff Godwin, coming off his program’s seventh straight trip to the NCAA Tournament, will be able to award 25 scholarships going forward. He had been working with a limit of 11.7 grants.

“We’re in a very, very good place,” Godwin said Monday. “Obviously, the increase in scholarships to 25 full rides is helping us — but also the increase in the rev share, which is similar to NIL, which is just coming under the umbrella of the Pirate Club.

“We are very lucky that we’re getting a piece of the pie because we can supplement our scholarship money with the rev share.”

ECU is not at the new NCAA upper end on grants, but the potential is there to attract and hold a larger quantity of talented players.

“You can have up to 34 full rides (in baseball),” Godwin noted. “Obviously, some schools are getting 34.”

Partial grants have been the rule for the Pirates. Loyal, proven players are being rewarded.

“It’s a distribution,” Godwin said. ” … Braden Burress goes from not making any money to a full ride. Jack Herring — not having any scholarship money to a full ride. Then, of course, these incoming guys are on scholarship as well.”

Incoming Pirates

Perfect Game lists 11 commitments for the Pirates from 2925 high school graduates.

The group includes (in alphabetical order):

Name | School, Hometown | Position | Notes

Brayden Bachman | Hickory, Chesapeake, VA | OF | Hit .538 for 16-6 team

Brett Beasley | Atlantic Shores Christian, Virginia Beach | SS | .345 with 9 HRs for 21-9 team

Luke Craddock | Pro5 Baseball Academy, Warrenton, VA | 1B | .351 career prior to senior year

Josh Hart | Terry Sanford, Fayetteville | RHP | 29 Ks in 21 innings for 26-7 team

Charlie Hoagland | Chaminade Julienne, Dayton, OH | LHP | 1.48 ERA for 18-10 team

Grady Lenahan | Pro5 Baseball Academy, Bristow, VA | OF | 1 of 4 from Raleigh-based Pro5

Ethan Rose | South Fayette Township, Bridgeville, PA | RHP | 5 closing wins left Lions 9-11

Jack Strom | Millbrook, Raleigh | OF | .374 with 24 steals for 19-10 team

Colby Weber | Shaler Area, Allison Park, PA | RHP | Helped team to 19-7 mark

Van Willner | Lower Merion, Merion Station, PA | RHP | 23 appearances in 4 seasons

Nathan Wines | Archbishop Spalding, Millersville, MD | RHP | Cavaliers were 22-16 in 2025

Perfect Game lists Strom at No. 285 nationally, the highest on its list of ECU commitments. Wines is No. 388. The remainder are Top 500 with the exception of Rose, who is Top 1,000.

The site has 7,286 commitments to college programs posted.

Coach Godwin doesn’t announce signees until after players are on campus for fall semester.

Exiting, Entering

There were some surprising departures via the transfer portal after a 1-0 loss to College World Series runner-up Coastal Carolina in the Conway regional on June 1.

The promising group of pitching departures included Lance Williams to Maryland, Jaden Winter (Charlotte), Ian White (Indiana), Brad Pruett (Georgia) and Bradley Zayac (Liberty). A total of 14 former Pirates saw greener grass elsewhere.

ECU has been recruiting the portal with an emphasis on reinforcing the mound staff.

The anticipated transfer arrivals include:

Name | Previous School | Position | Notes

Frank Ciccone | St. Jospeh’s | RHP | 5-5 for a 24-28 team with 4.70 ERA

Carlos Jerome | South Florida | INF | .309 with 34 RBIs for 31-25 Bulls team

Gavin Marley | Lenoir-Rhyne | RHP | 2.75 ERA in 28 appearances for 50-15 Bears

Thomas Paxton | Belmont Abbey | RHP | 2.50 ERA in 24 appearances for 41-17 Crusaders

Luke Payne | Tennessee | LHP | Highly recruited but limited action as freshman

Jeffrey Sabater | Millersville | OF | Hit .363 with 36 RBIs for 44-10 club

Gavin Van Kempen | West Virginia | RHP | 2-0 in 13 starts for 44-16 team

Godwin has been outspoken about recruiting in the current era, calling out coaches who have texted his players directly without their entry into the portal. Rising sophomore first baseman is a prime example.

“The portal is what it is,” Godwin said.  “If you want to coach in college athletics, now you got to deal with it. It’s not fun for any college coach. … The month of June is a nightmare for all baseball coaches because you’re trying to put your team together for next year in a month.

“Our portal window is probably longer than any other sports portal window, which makes it a little bit more difficult to navigate. We’ve got some good guys that are staying, of course, and they were very loyal to our program. The core that is coming back, we really liked. … We added some pieces from the portal and through recruiting in the traditional manner.”

 MLB draft takes two

The Major League Baseball draft claimed versatile Dixon Williams (Atlanta, 4th round) and right-handed pitcher Ethan Young (St. Louis, 5th round).

“There’s always some surprises, but we felt pretty confident that Dixon and Ethan both would be drafted and be drafted at a level that they would not be back for their senior season,” Godwin said. “Very happy for them. They had great seasons for us last year.”

Williams hit .299 as a junior with team highs in home runs (14) and RBIs (51). Young was 5-0 over 23 appearances with one start and a 3.84 earned run average.

Staff changes

Godwin has put personnel he knows well in positions on the Pirate staff.

“We have three new members of our staff,” said the former ECU catcher who was an academic All American. “Thomas Francisco, who played for us and been a graduate manager in baseball. You can’t have graduate assistant coaches like you can in other sports. It’s just the NCAA rule.

“Him and Bryant Packard, both were graduate managers in our program. Obviously, great players but also guys that really have worked hard behind the scenes to earn their promotion.

“Thomas Francisco’s our new ops guy (director of operations). Bryant Packard is our new director of player development. Heath Blackmon (former director of player development) was awarded the pitching coaching job at (Appalachian State) a few weeks ago, which was a good move for him because he wants to actually get on the field and coach. Great opportunity for him.

“Jake Gautreau is our new hitting coach. Very, very blessed to be able to get him to be a part of our program. We’ve had a relationship for around 15 years. … He believes in the way we do stuff. He’s a great hitting coach. Former National Assistant Coach of the Year. … Also won a national championship at Mississippi State back in 2021.”

A different team takes shape

The Pirates will be a significantly different team in 2026 after a No. 6 seeding in the American tournament in 2025. Godwin takes responsibility.

“I’m the leader of the program,” Godwin said. ” … Any blame about the way the regular season went, you can point it towards me. There’s a lot of factors that went into the way that we were inconsistent in the regular season.

“The positive is that we pulled it together when we had to. Played really good baseball for the last two weeks.”

ECU won the conference tournament and beat Florida twice in the regional.

“Our young guys that had had their ups and downs in an older game, came together . It was a very, very awesome two weeks that we got to share together at the end of the season.”

The catalyst?

Godwin was asked what flipped the switch going into the league tournament in Clearwater.

“It was a new season,” he said. “In a place like East Carolina, and this is anywhere that cares about baseball, but it’s in your face for the youth that are on your team. As much as you try to educate them (on social media) like, ‘Hey, if you read it when it’s good, you’ll read it when it’s bad.’

‘It was tough for some of our young guys to navigate that mentally. And our coaches did a tremendous job just as I would tell them.

“We had to keep coaching them, whatever our processes are, whatever the things that they need to do day to day, make sure they’re doing those at a high level. But we’ve also got to be positive with them when there’s some failure on the field. Our staff did a great job of just keeping them together.

“We had some team stuff behind the scenes that we addressed when we were down to the conference tournament. Dixon Williams really became a great leader on the field when he was thrown into a position he played in the fall, but he hadn’t really played at all in the spring. playing shortstop. … Braden Burress coming into the infield just helped from a leadership standpoint — toughness, competitive drive. Our infield just had this really great continuity out of the stretch in the postseason.”

Norby competes on high level

Rising junior left-hander made two solid starts for the USA Collegiate National Team in Japan.

“Very happy for him to get that opportunity to wear the red, white, and blue,” Godwin said. “Anytime you can have a guy be able to do that, I think it’s an awesome experience to represent our country. Obviously, going over to Japan is another experience in itself.

“I don’t think the United States has won over in Japan since the late seventies I think it is. It’s obviously a tough environment to play, but Norby has some really good experiences. We’ve talked. He’s back in town and it was very awesome for him.”

Strong nucleus returning

Norby and Burress will be counted on among returning players.

“We’ve got a good group coming back,” Godwin said. “You look at Colby Wallace who is a throwback player that never wants to leave East Carolina. Braden falls in that mix and you’ve got, of course, Walker Baron and Braxton Trammel and Sean Jenkins.

“Norby and Irby are coming back, Alex Peltier as well. Jack Herring is having a great summer up in the New England Collegiate League.

“We had some guys on the team last year that were hurt for the entire year, some pitchers. Some of those guys coming back being healthy this year is going to give us a big boost in our pitching as well.”

Transfers Ryan Towers (Liberty) and Brett Antolick (Texas A&M) missed 2024.

Planning to put the best on the field

Godwin won’t be considering the Pirate payroll when he’s making out his lineup.

“We didn’t recruit any of them not to be good,” he said. “If they were portal guys, we’d expect them to come in and be able to compete and at least push guys on our team. And I’ll say this publicly, in this world of players getting paid and stuff, that’s awesome, but we’re going to put the best nine guys on the field.

“I don’t care what you’re making. I don’t care if you’re a walk-on or if you’re making money. Last year we had three players that were receiving no money and Braden Burress, Jack Herring and John Collins that were on the field when we beat the University of Florida twice.

“That’s the way we’re going to run our program.”

Big changes

Godwin will be entering his 12th season as coach at his alma mater, a span of huge changes in college athletics.

“It’s a lot different,” he said. “Three years ago there was a little bit of the portal stuff going on, but it wasn’t to the level that it is now. It’s a broke system for sure. I don’t know how you fix it, but I think the amounts of money that’s being thrown around at certain levels is not teaching youth what reality is when it comes to the real world.

“No other profession can you sign a one-way contract where the person signing the contract is getting all the benefits/ There’s no tie other than the year that they’re at the school for them to stay an extended period of time. I don’t know what other profession you can do that in.

“If you can’t do it in professional sports, both sides have to agree to the contract so to speak. We agree to it, but there’s not a lot of skin in the game for the person that signs the contract.”

Baseball plant expanding

Facilities remain important in terms of player development, recruiting and comfortably accommodating team activities.

East Carolina’s baseball complex will soon be getting bigger.

“The groundbreaking should happen in early September of the facility renovation,” Godwin said/ “That’s the next biggest thing. We’re excited about that.

“There’s going to be an expansion down the third base line. They will basically gut out all the underneath stuff that we have now. We’ll just push down the third base line, but it’ll make their locker room nicer and our athletic training room nicer. We’ll actually have a team room and a nutrition area separate instead of having to flip our rooms.

“There will be a pro locker room for our pro guys. Our offices will move down the line a little bit. It will make everything underneath a little bit nicer, more up to date. The player amenities will be a lot better.”

Pirates in MLB

The planned pro locker room could have some prestigious occupants.

Gavin William had 11 strikeouts in seven innings in improving to 6-4 with Cleveland in an 8-2 win over the visiting Athletics on Sunday.

“Great game,” Godwin said, “I actually had a chance to watch most of it. It was awesome.”

Alec Burleson is hitting .289 for St. Louis.

Jeff Hoffman picked up his 24th save for division-leading Toronto on Monday night.

Miami third baseman Connor Norby is out of the lineup for 6 to 8 weeks following wrist surgery at the All-Star break.

Marlins manager Clayton McCullough, who split time at catcher with Godwin at ECU, has his club playing markedly better than 2024 in his rookie season at the helm.

Zach Agnos has four saves for Colorado.