Many of their baseball journeys include multiple stops. They were passed over or had to move on. They hail from California to Australia. The common resilience the Trojan baseball team shares has allowed them to deal with the ups and downs this season and win five games in four days to capture the Ohio Valley Conference Tournament.
Being a heavy underdog Friday afternoon against LSU in the Baton Rouge Regional is par for the course for this bunch.
"Adversity creates toughness," said junior DH
Ryan Geck, a Long Beach, Calif. native. "Everybody on our team has an interesting story of how they got here and what they went through as a baseball player."
Now, these baseball vagabonds have a chance play one of the 'blue bloods' of college baseball in one of the most electrifying atmospheres around.
"An opportunity like this is exciting for the entire team," Geck said. "It's something we have all looked forward to be able to play in a ballpark like this. Some guys have waited a long time for something like this."
And it almost didn't happen. The Trojans dropped 13 of their final 14 games, including a sweep at SEMO to end the regular season. They tied Western Illinois for the final tournament spot, but received the berth by virtue of taking the regular-season series over the Leathernecks.
"Over the course of the season, when things started to not go our way, we just had to say, 'Let's put the hay in the bard and flush it,'" junior third baseman
Ty Rhoades said. "You just have to move on and keep competing and that carried over to the tournament. We had fun and played hard."
Longtime Trojan head coach
Chris Curry dug into his motivational bag of tricks to inspire his club late in the season, ironically borrowing some ideology form former LSU head coach Skip Bertman. Bertman encouraged his dominant teams of the 1990s to 'hold the rope.' It was the title of the documentary the SEC Network aired on the Tigers icon.
"If you are hanging off a cliff, who do you want on top holding the rope?" Curry said. "It isn't necessarily the biggest guy. It is the best teammate. We want guys to be that teammate that is holding the rope. That's what I told them when things got tough.
"I kept telling them, 'If we can just get to the [OVC Tournament]. When we did, and we were 0-0, it was like a burden was lifted off them."
It didn't surprise Geck that Curry, who has his own winding journey through professional and collegiate baseball to draw from, pushed the right buttons.
"He always knows what to say," Geck said. "It could have been easy for us to lay down as a team after the SEMO series and go into the tournament and lose the first game and go home and be fine with being on vacation. But he motivated us and inspired us to believe we really do have a shot to win and might as well make the most of being there."
Let's Party
Whether fans are in Baton Rouge or Little Rock there are two gatherings planned to celebrate Friday's 2 p.m., Regional game at LSU.
In the Little Rock area, the UA Little Rock Alumni Association is hosting a watch party at Waldo's Chicken and Beer located at 10301 N. Rodney Parham. Fans can RSVP at
alumni@ualr.edu.
A group of more than 80 Trojan fans will gather at the original Walk-Ons Sports Bistreaux location at 3838 Burbank Drive in Baton Rouge. That party runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the outdoor patio.
A Field Trip
Little Rock head coach
Chris Curry told his team Monday night they were going on an outing the next morning. He didn't tell them where, but by the time the team had gathered for breakfast, they had figured out they were headed for a tour of the Marucci bat factory.
The Baton Rouge company has grown from a small shop to a multi-million dollar operation that now includes other brands such as Victus and features several buildings in an industrial park.
The tour started in a lobby with a large display of different bats and gloves and photos of the company's most famous endorsers. Other stops showed how the wood arrives at the facility in its raw form, painting and detailing and a performance lab where MLB players come in the offseason to get custom-fit products.
"They were excited," Curry said. "I think they thought we were going to a petting zoo or something. We really appreciate Marucci for all they do for us. They really take care of us, and this was a great surprise for us."
