Jack Risley joins the coaching staff of head coach Diana Pepin.
A Columbia native, Risley will assist in all areas of the program, with a focus on the pitching staff.
He joins the staff after a three-year baseball career between 2017 and 2019 at Eastern, where he was a right-handed pitcher who served as a spot starter and reliever who appeared in 20 games with eight starts with a strikeout-to-walk ratio of better than 2-to-1. In his second season in 2018, Risley was 2-1 with a 3.86 ERA in 28 innings.
The ‘Risley’ name is familiar to followers of Eastern athletics, where his late grandfather, John, was a 2006 inductee into the Eastern Alumni Hall of Fame and his uncle Sean, was a three-year baseball letterwinner under Hall of Fame coach Bill Holowaty in the early 1980s. John was the longtime pitching coach on the coaching staffs of the softball and baseball programs, helping both programs to national championships. John, who also served as a men’s basketball assistant in the 1970s under Hall of Fame coach Clyde Washburne, also compiled a two-year record of 50-29 as the softball head coach in 1994 and 1995, leading the Warriors to an NCAA tournament berth in his first season.
In addition to his coaching duties at Eastern, Risley serves as an assistant coach at the high school level in baseball, football and girls’ basketball.
Risley was an all-conference athlete in three sports at nearby Windham High School, where he earned All-State honors as an infielder in baseball and was a member of the National Honor Society. He also played American Legion baseball for Post 19 and on the AAU level with Team Connecticut and Central Connecticut Select.
Risley holds a degree in General Studies from Eastern as a Physical Education major.
