Underdogs Provide Lasting Fond Memories

Pictured here is Daniel Cooke, one of my players who played incredible baseball during the recent tournament. He was named to the All-Tournament team. It is my privilege to coach young men like him.

If you read this column regularly, you already know that I coach baseball for a living. You also may know that this whole column deal is just a hobby of mine, and I have promised you long ago that I won’t use this space to do sports reporting. But I have been advised that there are aspects of my profession that folks might find remotely interesting from time to time.

So this week (and maybe next) I am backing off my promise a little to inform you of my Gardner-Webb baseball team’s recent trip to the A-Sun Conference Championship Tournament. As you may know from reading the sports page, our team advanced all the way to the championship game and lost in the 15^th inning after the longest and what the old-timers in Florida say was the most exciting game in tournament history.

Coaches make a lot of decisions throughout the course of a season. These decisions can make a coach look like a genius or an idiot, depending on the outcome. For most of this season, I was un-genius-like. But all of a sudden during the tournament, the players made most every decision of mine look as if I had authored the book on baseball strategy.

Of course they deserve the credit, not me. I think coaches receive too much blame when their teams lose and way too much credit when they win.

The heavy underdogs from GWU played over their heads, if such a phenomenon exists. Several played injured. All performed when they were drop-dead tired. And the intensity of the pressure on the field was matched only by the heat and humidity in the air.

Back at the hotel, the guys entertained each other by playing games the likes of which you might see Boy Scouts playing around campfires. They laughed a lot before, during, and after the games. While anxiety reigned all around them, they remained cool as cucumbers.

Within an hour of the championship game loss, these incredible young men were once again laughing and enjoying each other. They had much to celebrate and we left Florida with our heads held high and extremely gratified to have experienced what we did.

Back on the bus, we received calls and text messages by the dozens. In some cases people admitted they weren’t sure what to say, worried that our devastation may have paralyzed us emotionally.

But it was not the nature of this year’s team to dwell on the negative. And we surely wouldn’t sulk after one of the greatest experiences of our athletic and coaching careers.

When I got back home, several people I ran into were rightfully guarded with their words, not wishing to upset me or conjure up negative memories. I was quick to let them know we were fine. The experience was beyond words, I explained.

For five days we lived a dream. And everything except the last pitch of the last game was magical.

I don’t believe in praying for wins, but before each game I hit my knees in the hotel room and asked God to grant us the courage and passion to play as hard as we could, as well as we could, as long as we could. And in the end, my prayer was answered. A hundred fold.