Van Horn’s path to ABCA Hall of Fame has NSU, Texarkana roots, helped by local stars
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Wherever Dave Van Horn has traveled in his nearly four decades as head coach in college baseball, victories have followed.
For that reason and many more, the iconic Arkansas Razorbacks baseball coach has been selected for induction in the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. Van Horn and six others will be inducted into the ABCA Hall of Fame on Jan. 8, 2027, at the 83rd annual ABCA Convention in Chicago.
The start to his head coaching career took place up the road in Texarkana, at what was at the time (1989-93) Texarkana Community College. After a breakthrough season (1994) at Central Missouri, where his team won the NCAA Division II national championship, Van Horn was hired by athletics director Tynes Hildebrand to replace Bossier City native Jim Wells as head coach at Northwestern State, after Wells was named Alabama’s coach.
In Van Horn’s three years at NSU, local players made impact. They have throughout his 24 seasons as head coach at his alma mater in Fayetteville, most recently with Razorbacks star Peyton Stovall and sophomore-to-be Christian Turner, both Haughton products.
At Northwestern, Van Horn led the Demons to victories in 62 percent of their games while capturing a Southland Conference regular-season championship (1995) and a Louisiana Division championship (1997). Two of his 106 wins with the Demons came in Baton Rouge April 2-3, 1996 in a two-game sweep of a Tigers team that went on to win the College World Series on Warren Morris’ walk-off home run to beat Miami.
Spending the 1995-97 seasons at Northwestern allowed Van Horn to break into the Division I coaching realm and encounter top-shelf competition for the first time.
“Being able to coach at Northwestern gave me the opportunity to jump both feet in and try to coach at the highest level of college baseball,” Van Horn said. “The Southland isn’t the biggest league, but it is definitely a league where you play good competition. It teaches you how to recruit – locally and nationally. You get some midweek games against teams like LSU and Mississippi State and some of those types of teams. It was definitely a training ground that gave me the opportunity to sink or swim. Fortunately, I hired a lot of good people, had a lot of good players and it worked out.”
Among the people he hired at Northwestern for his staff were future Texas A&M coach Rob Childress and two current Sun Belt Conference coaches, Louisiana Tech’s Lane Burroughs and UL-Lafayette coach Matt Deggs.
Van Horn’s credentials were clear when he arrived in Natchitoches. In nearly three decades since leaving Northwestern for Nebraska, Van Horn has run his victory total to 1,518 – tops among active Division I head coaches. He has earned three SEC Coach of the Year honors and in 24 seasons at his alma mater, has taken Arkansas to eight College World Series appearances, including a 2018 national runner-up finish.
Prior to his time at Arkansas, Van Horn took Nebraska to four NCAA Regionals and two College World Series berths.
In Van Horn’s first season, the Demons posted a 37-15 record and captured the Southland regular-season title, the third straight for the program. He added a Louisiana Division championship in 1997.
The first two SLC titles of that run came in 1993-94 under Wells, who was inducted into the ABCA Hall of Fame in 2024. Van Horn and Wells found themselves battling it out in the SEC with Wells skippering Alabama and Van Horn in his current position as Arkansas’ head coach.
“When we played Alabama in the early hears of being here at Arkansas, coach Wells and I would get together and, from time to time, talk about the days in Natchitoches,” Van Horn said. “We talked about how we enjoyed it. It was tough, and you had to do a lot more than coach. You were raising money, helping with the field. There’s a lot coaches at that level have to do.”
Van Horn credited his support system for allowing him to have the success he has enjoyed at all levels of college baseball.
“I always say, ‘we,’ because I feel like it wasn’t just me, myself and the other coaches,” Van Horn said. “It’s a family affair. You know, everyone’s involved. You’re away from home, coaching and recruiting and traveling, and you’ve got to have good backing from your family. I’ve had a tremendous wife (Karen), who’s been such a good baseball wife.”
- Most of the reporting in this story is by Jason Pugh, Northwestern State Sports Information Director