Ella Wolters, Arizona's director of baseball operations, discusses her 'dream job' and what it's like to work for Chip Hale (video by Michael Lev / Arizona Daily Star)
Her office sits between those of the hitting coach and the recruiting coordinator.
She's as important as anyone to the success of Arizona baseball.
She's all of 22 years old, less than a year out of school.
Meet Ella Wolters, the Wildcats' wunderkind. After graduating from the UA's Eller College of Management in 3½ years with a 4.0 GPA, she became Arizona's director of baseball operations.
It's an essential job filled with tasks that nobody wants to do.
Wolters describes her role as part firefighter, part zookeeper. Her duties include making travel arrangements for the team, organizing meals, coordinating recruiting visits, dealing with compliance, communicating with players and coaches, making sure players stay on top of their schoolwork and ensuring that the Wildcats have enough bananas for their dugout shenanigans -- even if it means ordering more midgame and having them delivered to the stadium.
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"We could have gone in a completely different direction," said UA coach Chip Hale, whose team opens NCAA regional play against Cal Poly at 1 p.m. Friday in Eugene, Oregon.
"We could have gone for more of a baseball person, like a lot of schools do. ... We really wanted somebody to take care of all the business that bogs us down."
Hale and Wolters' biggest in-house advocate, recruiting coordinator Trip Couch, had no reservations about hiring Wolters despite her youth. That's because they already knew her.
Couch first met Wolters when he was scouting her younger brother, Blake, at a Perfect Game event in Georgia in the summer of 2022. Ella had completed her freshman year at Arizona; Blake was about to commit to pitch for the Wildcats. He'd end up being a second-round pick of the Kansas City Royals, with whom he signed for $2.8 million.
"I remember that day like it was yesterday," Ella Wolters said. "I think I remember it so well because it was the day that changed my life, my brother's life and my family's life in the best way."
Wolters expressed an interest in working for the baseball program. Couch thought about the opportunities others in the sports world had given his daughters and wanted to pay it forward.
His older daughter, Chandler, first got into baseball as a student manager at Ole Miss. She then worked as an intern for the Baltimore Orioles. She's now the assistant director, scouting administration for the Texas Rangers.
Trip Couch urged Wolters to come to the baseball office at Hi Corbett Field. He figured that if her work ethic was anything like Chandler's, Wolters would be an asset.
"The way my daughter did it was, she was just there all the time, somebody would give her a task and she'd be good at it," Couch said. "So the next thing that came up, it might be something mundane like, 'Can you go get these pizzas?' But you know what? You don't screw up getting the pizzas and then you get asked to do something else. ... That's how you force yourself into people paying attention to what you're doing because they start trusting you.
"That was Ella's story, just like my daughter's. Everything you asked her to do, she did it great and with a smile on her face."
Baseball opportunities
Wolters grew up in Mahomet, Illinois, about 13 miles northwest of the University of Illinois campus in Champaign.
She considered going to a smaller, private school, or to the U of I, where both of her parents worked. But she had a positive visit to Arizona, got a favorable financial package and wanted to experience something new and different.
Wolters was a dance-team and cross-country captain at Mahomet-Seymour High School. She never played softball or baseball. But she grew up around the sport because her brother played and her parents co-founded a travel club. It intrigued her.
"There's just something special about baseball," she said during a recent interview in her office at Hi Corbett. "There's something special about sports in general. In baseball, especially, you have the time around the sport to really connect with people ... the athletes, the coaches.
"Even the pace of the game. You end up building camaraderie and relationships with the people you sit by in the dugout because you're there for three hours."
Wolters worked for one of her brother's club teams the summer after her freshman year. She then became a student manager for the Wildcats. Her initial tasks included inputting rosters. You have to start somewhere.
In the summer of 2023, Wolters worked as an intern for the Wareham Gatemen of the Cape Cod Baseball League. She charted pitches, served as a liaison to MLB scouts and helped run the All-Star Game.
"The Cape was amazing and something I'd recommend to anybody who is interested in a career in baseball," Wolters said. "You're basically surrounded (by) people who are eager to learn. They're there to become better people, a better baseball ops intern, a better coach, a better player. Everyone there is seeking to develop.
"It was a summer I really felt like I became comfortable in my own skin at the baseball field."
Wolters didn't get paid for any of it. So she worked as a barista at a coffee shop from 5 a.m. to noon.
"I'd go home for an hour, go on a run or take a nap. Then I was at the field from like 2 to 10," Wolters said. "It was a grind of summer."
The following summer, Wolters worked as an intern for the Los Angeles Dodgers. She helped digitize old records, programmed pitching machines and worked on a group project analyzing how teams draft and develop players. One time, she shepherded Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid and his family to batting practice.
The highlight was participating in the Dodgers' "Blue Star" presentation before the 2024 MLB Draft. Wolters got to present the case for a prospect to the Dodgers' brass. She chose Arizona left-hander Jackson Kent.
"I could have picked any player," Wolters said. "But I thought, 'These people already know so much.' What I can add is on his makeup. I've actually worked with the player. I know him. I can actually speak to his off-the-field abilities. They've clearly seen his on-field ability."
Kent was drafted by the Washington Nationals with the fifth pick in the fourth round. He has a 3.68 ERA for the Class-A Wilmington Blue Rocks.
Mentors and Mom
The ops position at Arizona came open that same summer when Will Gaines left for a job at UNLV. Couch viewed Wolters as a "no-brainer" for the role.
The problem was, she was still in school. A good ops person knows how to solve problems, though, so Wolters hatched a plan. She'd serve as the interim ops director, drop one of her majors and finish school in December.
Once she got the full-time gig, Wolters became one of only a handful of female ops directors in power-conference college baseball. Women have made significant inroads in MLB front offices. Sports Business Journal reported in 2023 that MLB had a record 25 women in "C-suite" executive positions (COO, CEO, etc.). In November 2020, Kim Ng became the general manager of the Miami Marlins -- the first woman to be the GM of a men's team in the four major North American professional sports.
Wolters isn't sure what she wants to do long term. She'd like to stay in baseball, but she also likes the idea of working in college athletics to "positively impact young people." She also wants to start a family someday.
The possibilities seem endless, even in an industry that still skews toward men. In the meantime, Wolters has caught the attention of those who've come before her.
Meredith Montgomery is the assistant athletics director for baseball administration at TCU. She began working in ops for the Horned Frogs in 2010 at about the same age as Wolters. Both said being young -- even younger than some of the players -- is more challenging than being a woman in a men's sport.
"Just setting that line of professionalism and really needing your coaching staff's support," said Montgomery, who met with Wolters when TCU visited Arizona earlier this month. "That's so important because it's hard, regardless of your sex. You've been to school with them. She and I talked a lot about that.
"That line, to me, was harder than women vs. men. ... It gets easier the more distance you have."
Montgomery stressed the importance of preparation, clarity and succinctness when "addressing 40 18- to 22-year-old men and commanding that space." Chandler Couch knows exactly what that's like.
"Ella has the perfect combination of humility and confidence that it takes to navigate through a baseball clubhouse, which is no easy task for a young woman in a male-dominated industry," Couch said. "She is truly the glue that keeps the team together -- the go-to person when things hit the fan. Those are the type of people that flourish in this industry."
UA athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois is one of only six female ADs in the Power Four conferences. She has traveled the path Wolters has just begun to traverse.
"From where I sit, Ella represents exactly the kind of leader we need in college athletics -- smart, steady and unafraid to lead in spaces where few women have been before," Reed-Francois said. "Her impact on Arizona baseball goes beyond operations; she brings clarity, connection and a championship mindset to everything she touches. We're fortunate to have her, and I'm proud to see her paving the way for others."
Wolters has many mentors, and she deeply appreciates their support. Her No. 1 role model is her mother, Angie, who led efforts to promote women in the field of engineering for nearly a decade at Illinois.
"My mom worked in a field where women were underrepresented," Wolters said. "Then she went on to absolutely crush a role where it was her job to help them become more represented.
"So, for me, there was never anything I couldn't do."
Contact sports reporter/columnist Michael Lev at [email protected]. On X (Twitter): @michaeljlev. On Bluesky: @michaeljlev.bsky.social
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