Gilmore relishing long road to CWS
As Coastal Carolina baseball coach Gary Gilmore raised his arms in the air triumphantly and connected with the Chanticleer fans celebrating above the team’s dugout Saturday night after the latest biggest win in program history, he recognized former pitcher Steve Ells in the crowd and pointed him out.
“I love you! You started it 21 years ago!” he shouted, his words thick with emotion.
As this incredible postseason push that has been more than two decades in the making for Coastal Carolina now reaches college baseball’s final stage, it seems only natural to look back once more as a way of appreciating what is now ahead.
And on Sunday, the morning after a 7-5 win over TCU put the Chants in the finals of the College World Series, as Gilmore was back at the ballpark with the national championship trophy sitting between he and Arizona coach Jay Johnson and the start of their best-of-three series looming Monday evening, he was asked to do just that.
Specifically, Gilmore was asked by an Associated Press reporter if he could describe what the baseball program at his alma mater was like when all of this began in 1996.
Gilmore smirked and shook his head while leaning back in his chair.
“I don’t know if we have enough time to go back that far,” he said.
Gilmore went on to talk about the neglected old facilities and about the culture of the program at that time, and as he reflected back on setting the foundation for what was to come, he thought of Ells and that first group of players.
“[There are] things that I laugh about with my coaches and my wife and things that I’ve actually laughed about since I’ve been out here, because several of those players have actually shown up here. It was just kind of a different mindset,” he said. “Just to kind of give you an idea, heck, when we had our first weekend practice and had our first team meeting, I said, ‘I’ll see you guys at 9 o’clock on Saturday morning,’ and I had two kids sitting there at the end of the meeting and they come up to me and say, ‘Coach, I can’t be at practice.’
“I’m [like], ‘What do you mean you can’t be at practice?’ He says, ‘Well, I’m a bartender down here at the beach and by the time I get off I won’t be able to make it to practice at 9 o’clock.’ So I was like, ‘Well, you’re going to have to make a choice, young man. We’re going to play baseball here.’ One of those young men was in the stands last night and he ended up being one of our best pitchers that year. It was just a mindset difference, but to go through the things that we’ve gone through to get here is incredible.”
Incredible, improbable and at this point unforgettable.
The Chants (53-17), who have the most wins in the country now and are the first team since Georgia Tech in 1994 to reach the finals in their College World Series debut, are just two wins away from a national championship as they prepare for their showdown with Arizona (48-22).
As the coaches would enumerate Sunday, the teams share a lot of similarities – in terms of their approach, their style to a degree, that they both had to win their way through the postseason in tough road environments before each working back through the losers bracket here in Omaha to reach this point.
And, of course, that neither was ever projected to be in this spot.
Coastal Carolina was simply trying to break through and just get to the College World Series for the first time, hoping a team laden with experienced seniors and juniors could be the one to go where no other group in program history had. And Arizona, meanwhile, had missed the NCAA postseason the last three years before taking off in year one under Johnson.
For the Chants, the season turned after being swept in a three-game series at Georgia Tech, April 29-May 1. They’ve won 22 of 25 games since then while working their way through the NCAA regionals at NC State and the super regionals at LSU and going 4-1 so far this week against the best competition in the country.
“In all reality I didn’t expect to be here about two or three months ago,” Gilmore admitted. “So as this has unfolded, I’ve just felt like if God was going to give me this opportunity to get here I’m just going to ride it out and trust that this is what I’m supposed to do and it’s worked out so far.”
Ryan Young: 843-626-0318, @RyanYoungTSN
This story was originally published June 26, 2016 at 10:40 PM with the headline "Gilmore relishing long road to CWS."