Northern Essex Community College Director of Athletics Dan Blair has announced that former Knights baseball standout Xavier Nunez will take over the Knights softball program effective immediately.

For Nunez, this will be his first college head coaching position, but he has significant experience with both softball and baseball at the club level and on the clinic circuit. He also served the past two years on Jeff Mejia’s baseball staff at Northern Essex. For the past five years he has worked with area softball players through Rams Athletic Complex Softball clinics at the North Reading based facility. At the facility he has also conducted private instruction for both softball and baseball. He has two years of club coaching experience as well with both Team Boston and New Hampshire prospects.

“I look forward to the challenge of building up the softball program at the college and will look to replicate the championship level of success from my days playing and coaching with the baseball program,” said Nunez.

Nunez was a two-year student-athlete in the Knights program playing third base on the 2016 and 2017 squads, which included a run to the national championship game in 2016. Following his time with the Knights, Nunez moved on to play two seasons at New England College in Henniker, NH in 2018 and 2019.

“Xavier is the right person at the right time to lead the softball program and start to build it back up to where we know it can compete and thrive,” added Blair

As a senior at NEC, Nunez appeared in 46 games and batted .383 for a squad that captured the schools first ever conference championship and advanced to the NCAA Division 3 tournament where they captured the New England Regional championship before falling in the Super Regional.

Nunez is a graduate of Lowell High School and currently resides in Lawrence.