Biography
Stein Rear is in his 14th season as Head Baseball Coach at Carroll University for the 2026-27 school year. In his tenure with the Pioneers, Coach Rear has become the most successful coach in program history, breaking the school record for career coaching victories in a 10-2 win over Wheaton (Ill.) College on April 28, 2018. He enters the 2027 spring baseball season with 207 victories at Carroll.
In 2017, the Pioneer program returned to the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) after 24 years of competing in the Midwest Conference. Their return was marked with success as they knocked off a top-15 ranked opponent for the first time in team history on April 1 in a 9-7 victory at Augustana (Ill.), who was ranked 15th by D3Baseball.com at the time. They also defeated North Central (Ill.) College, which would go on to win the CCIW and advance to the Division-III College World Series and finish fifth in the final D3baseball.com poll, by a score of 17-7 on April 15.
2018 was a banner year for the Pioneers, setting a new program record for wins in a season with 22, surpassing the old mark of 19 which had been set 17 years prior to that. Coach Rear also recorded his 100th career victory early in that season with a 10-6 win over Augsburg on March 16 in Tucson, Ariz.
2021 set a new standard of success at Carroll University, tying the program record for wins in a season with 22, which had been set in 2018. The Pioneers finished fourth in the CCIW in 2021, marking the highest finish in program history, while ending the year with a third-place finish in the CCIW Tournament. The Pioneers notched three wins over top-10 nationally ranked teams during the season and finished the year with 43 home runs, which ranked 20th in all of NCAA Division-III. Rear was honored as the 2021 Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association state collegiate coach of the year, marking the first time in program history that a Carroll University coach has received the honor.
2022 saw the Pioneers accomplish yet another first for the program as they qualified for the CCIW tournament for the second consecutive season, a feat never before achieved at Carroll University. They extended that streak to three consecutive years with yet another appearance in the postseason tournament in 2023.
Rear joined the Pioneers following a three-year stint as head coach at Northland College, an NCAA Division III member in Ashland, Wis., that competes in the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference (UMAC). With 38 victories in his three years at Northland, combined with his time at Carroll, Rear holds a career coaching record of 224-312 in his 15 total years.
During his time at Northland, Rear lead the LumberJacks to back-to-back UMAC tournament berths in 2012 and 2013 while leading the Jacks to their first winning season in nearly a decade. Prior to his arrival, Northland had not qualified for the post-season tournament since the UMAC went to a four-team format.
Prior to his appointment at Northland, Rear was an assistant coach for the UW-Whitewater from 2006-2010. During his five-year tenure, the Warhawks went 169-66 (.719), while winning four WIAC championships, appearing in three NCAA regional tournaments, and advancing to the Division-III College World Series in 2008. While at UW-Whitewater, Rear coached eight players who would go on to sign contracts to play professional baseball.
Coach Rear also served as the head baseball coach at his high school alma mater, New Glarus (WI) for five seasons. He took over a program that had won only three games in the previous two seasons, turning them into a conference contender before leaving to complete his graduate degree at Whitewater.
During his playing career, Rear was a catcher at UW-Whitewater where he received his undergraduate degree in physical education in 1998, as well as his master’s degree in physical education and coaching in 2007.
Coach Rear and his wife Sara reside in Waukesha and have two daughters, Bryn (16) and Adalyn (15) and a son Ivan (11).
