The second weekend of the Division I college baseball season wrapped up Sunday. At Creighton University, new head coach Mark Kingston takes over the program this spring.
Ed Servais retired following the 2025 season, after leading the Bluejays program for 22 years and to six NCAA Tournaments.
Kingston previously coached at South Carolina and was an assistant in Omaha last season. He also led the South Florida and Illinois State programs, and had assistant coaching stops in Division I. He’s been to the College World Series twice as an assistant coach and once as a player at North Carolina.
He’s looking to pick up the torch and run with a program that’s enjoyed national relevance for decades.
“Creighton baseball has a long, storied history,” Kingston said.
The Bluejays have one College World Series appearance, which came in 1991, but the program has made the NCAA Tournament 12 times — all since 1973.
Kingston joined the Creighton staff last year as an assistant. Fellow assistants Mike Current and Billy Mohl were also hired in 2025, before being retained this year on Kingston’s staff.
“I think we were able to help a lot, but at the same time, we got a head start on our recruiting for the future as well,” Kingston said. “So I think we’re in a really good spot.”
He added coaches and players want to represent Creighton and the city of Omaha in “a first class way.”
Being in Omaha — the home of the College World Series — is a nice perk in recruiting, Kingston said.
“When you factor in Creighton baseball’s history, the education, and on top of that we play in the best college baseball facility in the country here, I think that’s a very attractive thing to sell to potential recruits,” he said.
The Bluejays play home games at Charles Schwab Field, the site of the CWS.
With those resources, he inherits a healthy program coming off an NCAA Tournament appearance last season. Under Servais, Creighton led the nation in fielding percentage and had the fewest errors of any team in Division I over a 20-season period, according to Creighton Athletics.
“I want us to be built on pitching and defense but also have a pretty explosive offense that has some speed and some power,” Kingston said.
Add it all up and he wants to be “known as a very well-rounded program.”
As for the tradition of great fielding teams, he said it’s off to a pretty good start this year. The Bluejays bested Saint Mary’s College on the road on opening weekend, winning two of three in the series.
“Not to jinx it, because, you know, baseball people can be a little superstitious sometimes,” he said, “but for the first time since, I believe it was 1988, we went on the road and had an errorless weekend, opening weekend of the season.”
Kingston said his players hadn’t been outside much and had to practice indoors, which can be a challenging transition, especially on defense. The new head coach has been to many spots in warm weather climates, as well as a handful of colder biomes. Despite the tradition of college baseball in the state of Nebraska, the cold weather early in the season is a barrier.
“The biggest difference is that we don’t really get to play inner-squad games. When I was at South Carolina, we would have had as many as 12 to 14 inner-squad games before the season started,” Kingston said, “and so you know a lot more about your team.”
It’s a disadvantage not knowing exactly who’s playing well heading into opening weekend, he said.
“We’ll make adjustments, maybe during games and into the season that normally would have been made before the season,” Kingston said, “but that’s just part of the realities of coaching in the north.”
With the College World Series seeing record-high attendance in recent years, Clemson baseball head coach Erik Bakich proposed an idea. In an interview with reporters earlier this month, Bakich said moving back the start of the season would allow college baseball to take that next step and generate more revenue. Only a handful of highly successful college baseball programs make money for their athletic departments, with one estimate from the NCAA putting it around 10% of the roughly 300 college baseball programs in Division I.
“I think our sport is exploding. All you have to do is look at the College World Series and see what kind of support there is,” Kingston said, “or if you look at the league I just came from (Southeastern Conference), you’re getting 10,000 people a game at college baseball games.
“And I think a big deterrent for attendance up north is just that it’s too dang cold to come watch some games in March and April up here in the north,” he added. “But I think if they find a way to move the season back some, I think you’ll continue to see the sport grow.”
Creighton has spent the last two weekends in California. After the series win against Saint Mary’s, Kingston’s team went 0-3 in the Tony Gwynn Tournament in La Jolla, Calif., dropping games to UC San Diego, San Diego and Utah.
More warm weather games could produce a “boom” for college baseball, especially in the north, he said before the second weekend tournament.
For now, the Bluejays will continue to fly south for the winter, facing off with Tarleton State and Abilene Christian at a tournament in Cleburne, Texas, this weekend.