Cougar Baseball Coach

Keith Veale is entering his seventeenth season as the head coach of the MVNU baseball program. Over the past sixteen years, Veale has led the Cougars to a 537-251 overall record (.681), six conference titles, four National Christian College Athletic Association national championships, and the school's only two berths in the NAIA World Series in 1997 and 2004. MVNU has also won 30 or more games eleven times under Veale, and topped the 40-win mark during five of those years.

In 2005, Veale guided the Cougars to a 31-17 overall record as the team advanced to the NAIA Region IX championship game for the sixth straight year and also finished fourth at the NCCAA Tournament.

Veale has been selected as the NCCAA National Coach of the Year five times and conference Coach of the Year six times in his career, and he has twice been tabbed as the NAIA Region Coach of the Year (1996 and 1997). He has seen his teams qualify for postseason play in the NAIA in fifteen of his sixteen seasons at the helm, and he has also had eleven players sign professional baseball contracts during his tenure at MVNU.

In 1996, Veale led the Cougars to a 43-3 overall record, setting not only the NAIA national record but the all-divisions collegiate record for best winning percentage in a season (.935). The team also put together a school-record 24-game winning streak during the season.

To show that 1996 was not a fluke, Veale and the Cougars posted a program-best 47-8 overall record in 1997. The team also went 17-1 in the conference and advanced to the NAIA World Series in Sioux City, Iowa, for the first time in school history.

A native of Michigan and a 2005 inductee into the Owosso High School Alumni Wall of Honor, Veale graduated from John Wesley (Mich.) College in 1979 after playing baseball for four years, tennis for two years, and soccer for a year. He came to MVNU after graduation, and in addition to coaching baseball, he has served as the women's volleyball head coach (1983), the men's soccer head coach (1988), the women's softball head coach (1987-1989), and the intramural director (1979-1988).

Veale, who also teaches in the Physical Education Department at MVNU, resides in Mount Vernon with his wife, Toni, and their two children, Elyia and Kodi.

To contact Coach Veale, you can e-mail him at kveale@mvnu.edu.