Brandon Vial begins his second season as the Cougars Director of Player Development after being hired by Nathan Choate in July, 2023.
Last season, WSU won the Round Rock Classic title after posting wins over No. 24 Kentucky and Kansas in Texas while four players were named to the All-Tournament Team led by first baseman Joey Kramer who was named the Round Rock Classic MVP. The Cougars also saw swept Arizona State for the second time in program history, recorded their first win at UCLA since 2014 and first win at Stanford since 2016. The Cougar defense turned the second-most double plays (50) in the Pac-12 Conference and posted a .976 fielding percentage, the third-best mark in program history. Three players earned All-Pac-12 honors led by ace righthander Grant Taylor who finished the season with 99 strikeouts, the seventh-most in WSU single-season history while his 76 strikeouts in conference play led the league.
Vial arrived at WSU after working the prior two seasons as an assistant coach at Lewis-Clark State College, helping coach the pitchers and catchers as the Warriors reached the NAIA National Championship game in 2022 and 2023. The 2022 LC pitching staff finished the season second in the NAIA with a 3.21 ERA.
Prior to Lewis-Clark State College, Vial was the Director of Player and Program Development at Georgia Gwinnett College in 2021 where they won the NAIA National Championship. That season Gwinnett hitters led the nation in doubles, triples and stolen bases while the pitching staff led all of NAIA would 11 shutouts including a streak of consecutive shutout games. In 2020, Vial worked at the University of Nevada as the Director of Player Development.
In the summer of 2022, Vial was the head coach of the Walla Walla Sweets in the West Coast Summer League while in the 2021 summer, Vial was named the Northwoods League Coach of the Year after leading the St. Cloud Rox pitching staff to a record-setting summer.
Vial played two seasons at Feather River College where he went 16-2 with a 2.24 career ERA before playing his final two seasons at Austin Peay where he made 33 career appearances and tallied five wins and two saves. The Reno native earned his bachelor’s degree in business marketing from Austin Peay State in 2019 and a master’s degree in education from Nevada in 2020.
