By: Shanna Rose
MORGANTOWN, W.Va.- Since 2013, the West Virginia University baseball team has been brewing something special but when the Mountaineers secured their second straight super regionals appearance last weekend, it was evident that what is happening right now is spectacular for the program and the state.
WVU has always been known for its football and basketball programs on a national level. To the residents of West Virginia, they truly bleed gold and blue.
When the Mountaineers came from behind to win three straight games in the Clemson Regional, the amount of hype surrounding the program was buzzing.
The amount of talk going around about people rooting for Little Rock to pull off the upset so that WVU could host the super regionals was all around.
People were excited about Mountaineer baseball.
“You look at your phone and I have 189 text messages after a win,” WVU head coach Steve Sabins said. “You know a lot of folks, but you’re going, man, if that many people want to personally reach out, that effect is just multiplied to every staff member and all of our team and players and everybody else. I’m so excited because I do think a lot of people were watching the Little Rock LSU games and for this place to be the best, you do have to have a fan base and you have to have support and you have to have financial support and you have to have all those things, but you have to understand what’s going on.
“You have to understand what a regional format is and what a super regional is and how it matches up and what the College World Series is and that’s how you get people really invested and the more people that we have invested in the place, the closer we are to being the best and so I am getting that sense and it makes me extremely proud to be part of it.”
What is happening right now in Morgantown is special. It is great for the state and the program, which has grown so much in the last decade, from a new baseball field to the Baseball Biometrics and Performance Center.
This group of Mountaineers are now on the path to try and do something no other WVU team has done before, advance to Omaha.
One thing about Sabin’s team is they never give up. Over the final seven games, the Mountaineers went 1-7 before exiting the Big 12 Championship in the quarterfinals with a 12-1 loss to Arizona.
When WVU went to the Clemson Regional last weekend, it was a fresh start and the Mountaineers showed their resiliency. If someone struggles, somebody else picks the them up.
“We talk about there being 96 people in our organization and we talk about this team being a coal train and that every person is a part of the coal train and every person is a car of this. And we’re all trying to move forward and you build momentum together. And if something gets off the tracks, it can wreck the entire train, Sabins said.
“And so I think for me to sit and answer exactly why it got back on the tracks and why guys are moving forward and feeling really good about showing up and playing every day, probably wouldn’t be fair because I think that there’s 96 individuals that go to bed every night trying to figure out how to make this the most successful and best team in the country. And so did I have my piece? Yeah. We threw things into a fire and we started over and we had rebirths and team meetings and individual meetings and video reviews and sent guys highlight films and went to steak dinners and got in cold tubs and set up massages and practice hard and practice light and practice in pants and practiced in shorts and practice with no shirts and practice with shirts.”
Against LSU, WVU will be an underdog but don’t count this group out just yet.
