EWU rewards men’s basketball coach Jim Hayford with salary boost

Three months after leading Eastern Washington to its best basketball season as a Division I school, coach Jim Hayford has been rewarded with a five-year contract extension that increases his base salary by 32 percent.

“I think it’s an endorsement of the building process of our program,” said Hayford, who will be guaranteed $155,000 annually, not including performance incentives, the school announced Thursday. Together with his share of proceeds from EWU’s annual camp, Hayford’s total compensation could reach about $260,000 a year.

The extension comes barely a year after Hayford signed a new contract with an annual base salary of $117,000. That deal replaced a $99,500-a-year deal which Hayford signed when he took over the EWU program in 2011.

Last year, the Eagles set program best for wins (26), Big Sky Conference victories (14), road record (11-6) and nonconference record (9-4) en route to the school’s second berth in the NCAA tournament. Along the way, Eastern shared the Big Sky regular-season title and won the conference tournament.

“I want to give a special thanks to my staff and players who have given everything they have to turn the program around,” said Hayford, who leaves today for an 18-day recruiting trip.

With 66 victories overall and 39 conference wins under Hayford, this is the best four-year stretch since 2000-04 when Eastern had 69 wins overall and 41 in the Big Sky. Last year, the Eagles won at Indiana, San Francisco and Seattle and were ranked as high as 12th in the national mid-major poll, and 50th in RPI.

Since Eastern became a member of NCAA Division I in 1983, no coach has lasted longer than five years.

“This new agreement complements what our program accomplished last year with the hopes of keeping Jim in Cheney for the foreseeable future,” EWU athletic director Bill Chaves said.

Hayford’s new contract, which ends in April 2020, includes up to $99,000 from the summer camp. Incentives include $5,000 for winning at least 20 games; $3,000 each for winning the Big Sky regular-season and postseason tournament; and $5,000 for a team grade-point average above 3.0.