Jim Toman, the veteran college baseball coach who led Liberty University to its most successful era and later served as head coach at Middle Tennessee, died on August 4, 2026, from brain cancer he had been battling since his diagnosis in 2025. He was 64.
Born James Michael Andrew Toman in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, Toman played baseball at NC State from 1981 to 1984, serving as team captain in his final two seasons and earning a spot on the All-Tournament Team at the 1984 ACC tournament. After graduating in 1985, he spent several years coaching at the high school level before beginning his college coaching career in 1989 with a one-year stint at FIU.
Toman returned to his alma mater in 1990, joining Ray Tanner’s staff at NC State as an assistant, a partnership that carried through to South Carolina when Tanner took over the Gamecocks program in 1997. Toman spent eleven seasons as an assistant in Columbia, earning ABCA and Baseball America Assistant Coach of the Year honours in 2002.
In 2008, Toman left South Carolina to become head coach at Liberty, a role he would hold for nine seasons. Under his leadership, the Flames won at least 30 games in each of his first seven seasons, culminating in a Big South tournament championship in 2013 and a Big South North Division title with an at-large NCAA tournament bid in 2014, the same year Toman was named Big South Coach of the Year. Over his tenure, Liberty reached the NCAA tournament twice and set a Big South record with seven players drafted in a single year in 2011.
Toman resigned from Liberty in June 2016 and later joined College of Charleston as assistant head coach before being named head coach at Middle Tennessee in 2018, a position he held through 2022. Across his full head coaching career at Liberty and Middle Tennessee, Toman compiled an overall record of 406 wins, 308 losses, and two ties.
Toman is remembered within college baseball as a coach who built sustained success at Liberty during a period that established the program as a consistent conference contender, leaving behind a legacy shaped by two Big South championships and a career that spanned more than three decades in the sport.