The NCAA Baseball Rules Committee has selected Richard Fetchiet to serve as its secretary-rules editor, making the former umpire only the second individual to hold that position in the last 16 years.

A higher education administrator at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, Fetchiet currently is supervisor of baseball umpires for the Big Ten, Mid-American, Midwestern Collegiate, Great Lakes Intercollegiate and Michigan Intercollegiate Conferences. He also serves with the NCAA National Umpire Program Advisory Committee.

"A guy with that experience in applying the rules of the game will certainly be of great benefit to the committee and all of college baseball," said Lynn Thompson, director of athletics at Bethune-Cookman College and baseball rules committee chair.

Before retiring from active umpiring after the 2000 season, Fetchiet officiated numerous Division I conference and national tournaments, including three College World Series appearances, and he was plate umpire for the 1999 national championship game between the University of Miami (Florida) and Florida State University.

"He is an outstanding selection," said Dave Keilitz, executive director for the American Baseball Coaches Association. "I have known Rich for many years as an umpire and administrator, and I feel he will fill this role extremely well. He certainly knows the rules inside and out, and there is no doubt in my mind he will do a terrific job."

Fetchiet's responsibilities to the committee include acting as the official interpreter of the rules between meetings, recording suggestions for rules changes throughout the year for committee analysis, and ensuring technical accuracy of the rules before their publication in the annual rules book. His nonvoting term with the committee is for four years, after which he may be reappointed without restriction.

Fetchiet, 45, replaces Bill Thurston, who served as rules-editor since 1985. The head baseball coach at Amherst College, Thurston's resignation after the committee's annual summer meeting led to a national search that included nominations from all NCAA baseball-playing conferences.