My first blog post gave you a brief introduction to who I am. This post will talk about my collegiate baseball career. It is not a particularly interesting story or one that I tell often. You see, I try my best to not let my playing career define me and who I want to be as a coach. But I hope that by sharing this part of my career that it gives you a better understanding of me and what makes me tick.
In the Fall of 2017, I attended Wilfrid Laurier University and played for the baseball team.
Fresh out of High School I finally was at the doorsteps of my dream - playing college baseball.
Training camp started a couple of weeks before the semester and the Fall season.
On the first day of camp I was more nervous then I had ever been. Despite being recruited and having a spot on the roster already as a Catcher, I was hell-bent on proving myself and leaving nothing to chance.
Training camp lasted a couple of weeks - we practiced, intersquaded and played some exhibition games against other colleges and universities to prep for the season.
I had a really good camp and was feeling really positive about the season. As the season started though I quickly became aware of how the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) league operated. At Laurier, we had a massive roster carrying 40+ guys for what amounted to a 8 week season. Only being able to dress 30 guys a game meant we carried red-shirts. Most of these ended up being first-year pitchers. These guys had to watch the games from the stands and never traveled with the team for road games. I was lucky that I was not one of them.
For those 8 weeks, baseball was a full-time gig. We had one off-day a week and played 4 games on the weekends with a Wednesday night exhibition game. During the weekends I caught bullpens and Wednesday night was my chance to play and show I could contribute.
Being behind two upper-year catchers in the depth chart meant that unless one got injured I would not see the field that year. I was well aware of this going into the season; however, I was ill-prepared for how much this would challenge my passion for the game.
Spending 8+ hours at a field on a Saturday to catch bullpens was not what I pictured when I was working myself to the bone throughout high-school to make it there. This was no one's fault but my own. I did not deserve to play considering the caliber of players ahead of me. I was approaching my ceiling as a player. I did not think there was much room left for me to develop - I was simply as good as I was going to get.
The season ended with us losing a heartbreaking game in the Championship of our league playoffs. I spent the entirety of that game crouched in a catchers squat in the bullpen as we frantically warmed pitcher after pitcher up trying to find the arm that could lead us to victory.
As I jogged in from the bullpen to shake hands I thought about the season - I thought about how soul-crushing it was to find out that I was good, just not good enough.
The next couple of weeks after the season I started thinking about the next one - taking the time to think about what I could do differently, how I could be more prepared.
I then asked myself the tough question: "can you handle another year as a bullpen catcher?"
The two upper-class catchers ahead of me were coming back and I knew that best case I would play a little more. Worst case - it would be identical.
I asked myself if I could improve my game enough in the off-season to beat one of them out. But being in University full-time and practicing with the team left me little time to dedicate to the areas I needed to improve. I knew I needed to become a better hitter if I wanted to play, but catching bullpens left little time to work on my hitting. And honestly, I had a lot of ground to cover if I wanted to be where I needed to be.
It took me weeks to accept that I was probably not going to become the player I wanted to be in an off-season.
The only way I could get better fast enough was to dedicate all my time to training. So I began debating with myself about dropping out for a semester and transferring to a different school.
Doing this would A: allow me to train as hard as I could in my own way and B: have a fresh start at a different school with less competition to beat out.
The only problem with this was that as a Catcher most of the other schools in the league had upper-year guys cemented into their roster. If I transferred out I would be right back to a 3rd string role.
This was discouraging - I wanted to play. I worked my whole life to play college baseball and I did not want to spend another season watching others live out my dream. This is extremely selfish and narcissistic no doubt - but I think we can all agree this is what drives us to a certain extent.
So I started to have this crazy idea about switching to pitching. I always had a great arm - it was the one area of my game people always complimented. Maybe I could play more and contribute more as a pitcher?
Staring out into the abyss that was my collegiate career, I took a leap of faith. I bet on myself that I could make the transition to a pitcher and achieve more than I would as a catcher.
It was a risk. I knew that I might not make the jump. I knew that I could end up failing and losing the opportunity to play college baseball ever again.
So in the Winter of 2018, I dropped out of school and started training full-time. I bought my own set of Driveline Baseball gear and started following one of their throwing programs. Having pitched maybe a total of 15 innings in my life up to that point I was hopeful that with the right training my velocity would spike. I started the off-season topping out at 77-78mph which would be below average for the OUA. The goal was to top out at 81 bringing me to right around what I thought would be the league average.
Stay tuned for part two to hear about my transition to pitching, how I walked on to my hometown University, and how I eventually decided to quit a collegiate baseball playing career midway through the season.