Tom Ford enters his 35th season with the Cornell baseball team in 2025. It is Ford's 17th season serving as the Big Red's associate head coach after spending his first 18 seasons at Cornell as head coach, being named the first Ted Thoren Head Coach of Baseball when that position was endowed in the summer of 1999 by Rich Booth ‘82.
Ford succeeded the legendary Thoren when he was named the 15th head coach in program history in 1991. Prior to taking over the Cornell program, Ford was the associate head coach at Ithaca College for 10 years.
In his 18 years as head coach at Cornell, Ford compiled a 266-467-2 record. He won his 200th career game in the first game of a doubleheader at St. Joseph’s (Pa.) on March 13, 2004.
During Ford's tenure as head coach and an associate head coach, the Big Red have had a total of 128 all-league honorees, whether it was All-EIBL or All-Ivy honors. Ford has coached 30 first-team selections and 44 second-team picks, and has had the privilege of working with all of Cornell's major award winners, including Erik Rico, the 2002 Ivy League Player of the Year, Chris Schutt, the 2003 Ivy League Pitcher of the Year, and all three Rookie of the Year honorees: Bill Walkenbach (1995), Kellen Urbon (2012), and Mark Quatrani (2024). Ford also coached Chip DeLorenzo, who won the EIBL's Blair Bat, in his first season as head coach in 1991. DeLorenzo logged a .478 batting average in conference play.
In 2007, the Big Red ushered in a new era in Cornell baseball history, playing its first season on a renovated Hoy Field. The new FieldTurf playing surface immediately paid dividends, as that season’s squad set the then-school record for fielding percentage, posting a .970 percent success rate, good enough to rank 42nd nationally. The Big Red also was 22nd in the country in triples per game, averaging just over one every three contests.
The 2005 squad accomplished a number of firsts for the Cornell program, winning the school’s first Ivy League Gehrig Division title. The Big Red swept four games from Penn on April 23-24 to become the first Cornell team to sweep a four-game series against an Ivy League foe. Those four games, and the first game of a doubleheader at Siena on April 26, marked the first time in program history the Big Red held its opponent to one run or fewer in five consecutive games. The first three games of the Penn series also marked the first time in four years that Cornell pitchers threw three consecutive complete games.
In 1995, Ford guided the Big Red to a 20-19 overall mark and a second-place finish in the Gehrig Division of the Ivy League. He also had the 1998 squad in contention for the division crown until the final weekend of the season, going 12-8 in league play for the team’s best league record to date. The 12 wins in conference action were also the most since the 1982 squad went 12-6 in EIBL play.
His first squad in 1991 compiled a 23-17 overall record, the program’s first winning season since 1984. As a team, the Big Red hit .306, marking its first .300 season in seven years. The Big Red also knocked off Georgia Tech in the second game of a doubleheader when the Yellow Jackets were ranked second in the nation.
A 1979 graduate of Ithaca College, Ford has a Bachelor of Science degree in physical education and was awarded his master’s degree in 1981. Upon graduation, he served as head junior varsity and assistant varsity coach for the Bombers from 1979 to 1980. He worked strictly with the Bombers varsity as the pitching coach from 1981 until his appointment at Cornell in 1991.
Ford also worked as a physical education instructor in the Lansing Central School District. He was the Bobcats’ head football coach from 1984 to 1990 and also spent time as the head junior varsity and assistant varsity basketball coach. Ford also coached the Ithaca Junior Yankees in 1980.
During his undergraduate days at Ithaca, Ford was a three-year pitching standout on the varsity squad, serving as co-captain in 1979. He was the recipient of the Carlton “Carp” Wood Attitude Award following his senior year.
A graduate of Trumansburg (N.Y.) Central School in 1975, Ford played varsity football, basketball and baseball. He and his wife, Kristen, who is the Senior Associate Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development at Cornell, have two children, Matthew and Jocelyn.
