In his fourth year coaching his alma mater, Chip Hale got Arizona back to Omaha. And that helped earn him another four seasons to continue the program’s forward momentum.
The Arizona Board of Regents on Thursday
formally approved a 4-year contract extension for Hale, extending him through the 2030 season. He had one year left on the original contract signed in 2021.
The 60-year-old Hale would earn $2.64 million over the life of the deal, an average of $528,000 per season. That’s only a slight increase on the original $2.55 million contract, though the new one breaks apart his compensation between base pay ($350,000 annually) and additional duties ($170,000 in the first two years, $180K in years three and four and $190 in 2030).
“I just want to continue what we’re doing,” Hale said Wednesday. “We got to Omaha. So just continue on, get better.”
Hale earned $65,000 in bonuses last season for winning the Big 12 Conference tournament, making the NCAA tourney, winning a regional and reaching the College World Series. And in 2024 he got $50,000 in bonuses, including $10,000 for Pac-12 Coach of the Year.
Those incentives have gone up under the new deal, with a regular season league title earning him $25K and a conference tourney championship $15K. A return to the CWS would net at least $140K and he’d get $200K for winning a national title, though there’s a $250K cap on annual bonuses.
Hale’s buyout for being fired without cause, or resigning to take another job, are both 65 percent of the remainder of his base salary in the contract.
Arizona lost nine key members of the team that went 44-21, winning the Big 12 tourney title and then taking down the Eugene Regional and Chapel Hill Super Regional before going 0-2 in Omaha. The Wildcats also had to replaced their pitching coach, with Kevin Vance leaving to become head coach at San Diego State.
John DeRouin was promoted from within, as was Owen Cuffe, who will serve as DeRouin’s right hand man.
“For a coach it’s a really fun year, because we get to develop some guys,” Hale said of 2026. “I really couldn’t tell you who are starting nine position players are now, and most of the time, at this time, you kind of know, trying to figure out what the order is going to be. There’s going to be a lot of battling going on in January.”
