Head baseball coach Mark Kingston recieves two-year contract extension
After his most successful season at the helm to date, South Carolina's Governance Committee extended head baseball coach Mark Kingston’s contract on Friday, with full finalization coming from the Board of Trustees on Friday afternoon.
Kingston will now be under contract through May 31, 2027, an extension from his previous contract which was set to expire on Jun. 30, 2025. His base salary increased from $600,000 to $725,000, an overdue bump. Kingston is still only tied for 13th out of 16 SEC head coaches who will be in the league when Texas and Oklahoma join in base salary, and 11th out of 14 current schools in the league only ahead of, Georgia's Wes Johnson, Missouri's Kerrick Jackson and Kentucky's Nick Mingione.
"I think we're in a good position," Athletics Director Ray Tanner said looking ahead for the baseball program. "We have some returners back, some young players that returned at a high level and are back."
As for the terms of his buyout, it will cost the university $800,000 to terminate his contract prior to Jun. 30, 2024, and the number will drop to $400,000 if he is terminated prior to the same date the following year. If he is relieved of his duties within the next calendar year (following the 2026 baseball season) the buyout will be $300,000, followed by a final buyout of $200,000 if he is fired in the final year of the contract before it expires.
Under the previous contract, his buyout would have been $800,000 if terminated before Jun. 30, 2024 and $400,000 if terminated any time in the following 12 months, meaning the extension did not come with any raise of buyout.
If Kingston himself terminates the contract before May 31, 2024 it will cost him $200,000, with a drop to $100,000 in each of the following two seasons.
South Carolina went 42-21 in the 2023 baseball season, its first 40-win campaign of the Kingstonn era. The Gamecocks were ranked as high as No. 3 in the country at one point and spent most of the season in the top-10, before scuffling down the stretch with four consecutive SEC series losses to close the regular season.
The team rallied the team when it mattered most though, sweeping through the Columbia Regional and making the program’s first Super Regional since 2018, where it fell short against the Florida gators in a two-game sweep.
"I think if you just go back through our season and the way we played for the majority of the season until we had to endure some injuries, it was an Omaha-caliber team," Tanner said. "He put together a great squad. There's a handful of teams in the country that would say they had an Omaha-caliber team but didn't make it. I think that's ultimately what you want to do as a program in the SEC, or anywhere else."
Across six seasons in Columbia the program is 180-130 under Kingston’s leadership, but just 70-79 in SEC regular season play. The 2023 campaign marked South Carolina’s highest winning percentage in SEC play since 2018, Kingston’s first season and the only other Super Regional appearance of his tenure.
He has reached the NCAA Tournament in three out of his five completed seasons with an 8-6 record in the postseason, but is still yet to crack the code on a trip to Omaha that has eluded the program since Tanner's last season as skipper in 2012.
"T think you would say there are some pitchers that would have to step up or guys who got recruited, certainly, but every team is going through that," Tanner said. "I'm confident we're going to have a good team next year."
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