Ted Thoren

Theodore H. Thoren

• School Ithaca College
• High School Wellsville High School

• Born October 31, 1921 in Paris France
• Died February 10, 2011 in Ithaca, NY USA

Biographical Information

Ted Thoren was a long-time college coach.

Thoren was born to a French mother and American father. His parents divorced when he was 3 and he moved in with his grandmother in Pennsylvania. He was a Gold Glove amateur boxer and semipro pitcher from 1938-1942 then served as a physical training instructor for the Army Air Force from 1942-1946. He played football and baseball in college after the war. He then went into coaching, serving as assistant football coach at Cornell University (1952-1961), assistant baseball coach at Cornell (1955-1961) and head baseball coach at Cornell (1962-1990). He went 541-520-11 at Cornell, setting a school record for career wins in any program (broken in 2011 by softball coach Dick Blood). In 1979, his club went 29-15, a school record for baseball wins in a season that still stood as of 2011; the team finished two wins from the 1979 College World Series.

He was also involved in the international game. In 1983, he began working on baseball in Yugoslavia, where his grandmother was from. He remained with the Croatian national team after Yugoslavia split. He also coached for the Austrian national team in the 1996 European Championship B-Pool. Thoren was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Cornell Athletics Hall of Fame in 1992.

Sources

• Ithaca Journal obituary
• Cornell Athletics
• Baseball in Europe by Josh Chetwynd