Loren Torres earned his 600th win as Point Park head coach on Sunday after a 22-11 victory over Wheeling, marking the final conference matchup of the regular season.
“It means a lot,” Torres said, “It represents all the relationships, the journey and a lot of special moments”
Torres hit 700 career wins earlier this month during Point Park’s game at PNC Park versus California (Pa.) on April 9.
“It’s an extremely impressive achievement, and it just goes to show how great of a coach he is,” junior outfielder Trevor Jones said. “It also is a sign that what he’s doing will work and will continue to work for years to come.”
Torres enters his 17th season at Point Park after being hired as head coach in July 2009. He previously coached at Judson University, a Division III institution in Illinois.
“Early in my career, I was chasing wins and chasing finances,” Torres said. “I had a paradigm shift where I became more of a transformational coach rather than a transactional coach.”
In his 16 complete seasons as a Pioneer, Torres won six conference tournament championships and eight regular season conference championships. He maintained a .701 win percentage and earned six coach of the year honors.
He shared that, beyond the accolades, he is most proud of his team’s high graduation rate and GPA, as last year’s roster boasted a team-average 3.09 GPA during the 2024-25 academic year.
“I started concentrating on relationships [and] on impacting people’s lives,” Torres said. “That’s when the wins began to pour in, and the championships began to pour in.”
Point Park baseball is coming off three-straight conference titles, after winning the NAIA River State Conference championship in 2023 and 2024, then capturing the NCAA Mountain East Conference title in 2025.
“Every year has its own identity,” Torres said. “Inside those three championships were different seniors, and they leave. But what doesn’t graduate is tradition. Our tradition, our culture [and] the way we do things continues to stay. The standards can continue to stay high.”
Point Park’s athletic department made the transition to NCAA Division II athletics in July 2024 with an invitation to compete in the Mountain East Conference. In its first season of NCAA Division II play, Point Park baseball won both the MEC regular season championship and the conference championship tournament under Torres.
“His leadership is a big reason we’ve gone back-to-back-to-back,” Jones said. “He leads by example and has shown us the hard work it takes for us to be successful consistently year to year.”
The Mountain East awarded Torres MEC Coach of the Year honors in 2025.
“What sets coach Torres apart is his work ethic,” Jones said. “The hours [Torres] has put into us to develop us is a big difference from any other coach I’ve had. His heart is 100% in it for us.”
Torres’ 600th Point Park win on Sunday marked the final game of a four-game series versus Wheeling, the winningest team in the conference. The teams split the series 2-2, concluding regular season conference play for Point Park.
The Pioneers ended the regular season with an 18-10 MEC record, putting the team third in the MEC North Division, as of Monday. Sunday’s win put Point Park at 27-17 overall.
“We have a much newer team,” Torres said. “We graduated a team that won 3 straight championships and we have a bit of a newer team, a younger team. They’re peaking at the right time.”
Point Park travelled to face Slippery Rock in a non-conference game yesterday evening. The Pioneers continue the non-conference play to close the regular season, taking on Salem this weekend in a four-game series on the road.
The 2026 MEC Baseball Tournament takes place between Wednesday, May 6 and Sunday, May 10 at GoMark Ballpark in Charleston, W. Va.
“We have a great chance to win the tournament, and we’re playing really well,” Torres said. “We’re in line to continue to trend up, to play good baseball here at the end and see where we’re at when the bell rings.”
