Every year just before Thanksgiving, UConn Baseball Head Coach Jim Penders leads a run up the steep hill at New Storrs Cemetery on the northern side of campus. The destination is the Storrs family grave, which sits on top of the hill – always with a clear view of Storrs Congregational Church, as stipulated by the Storrs brothers’ will.

The players, the years and the victories have rolled by, and on Tuesday the present-day Huskies presented Jim Penders with his 500th as UConn’s coach, a 4-0 victory at Boston College behind the pitching of Jeff Kersten.

In the bowels of Gampel Pavilion, down a hallway plastered with smiling NBA draft picks, Jim Penders’ corner office sits as a shrine to UConn baseball’s rich yet relatively recent history as a star-making program in its own right.

Cold-weather baseball teams aren’t supposed to have the kind of success Jim F. Penders ’94 (CLAS), ’98 MA has had in his 15 seasons as head coach of the Huskies. It’s in his DNA, other coaches insist – and they may be right.