Dallas Baptist hits the big time
School’s rising program goes all-out as it hosts its fifirst NCAA regional.
During a break at practice Wednesday, Dall as Baptist baseball players were instructed to bend over in the batter’s box at Horner Ballpark and inspec t the turf for debris.
“There was junk there, and they weren’t doing anything,” Patriots coach Dan Heefner said. “So I made them pick it up.”
At DBU, a private school of 5,400 students, the entire community, pl ayers included, is chipping in to put forth a good impression during what is arguably the biggest week in the brief history of its baseball program. Starting Friday, the school will host its first NCAA baseball regional, meaning a 28-year-old athletic director and his 15 full-ti me employee s must coordinate ticket sales, rope off parki ng areas and even locate a helicopter to help remove rainwater that soaked the outfield at the 3-year-old stadium.
“It’s all hands on deck,” said Athletic Director Connor Smith, who graduated from Cedar Park High School before playing golf at DBU. “Especially at a school this size.”
Texas and Oregon State,
which each won national titles in the past 10 seasons, will attend the regional, as will Virginia Commonwealth, which will take on the top-seeded Patriots in Friday’s second game. Visitors will be greeted by a serene campus rubbing up against Mountain Creek Lake in the southwest end of town. Fittingly, a dining hall is occupied by a Chick-fil-A, whose Christian beliefs are grounded in Southern Baptism. Outside, steep hills allow freshmen to sweat off those chicken fingers.
Inside Horner Ballpark is one of the most unlikely success stories in college baseball. The Patriots, who weren’t a Division I program until 2004 and weren’t eligible for the postseason until two years later, cracked the top 10 for the first time this season behind the keen recruiting eye of the 37-year-old Heefner along with increased financial backing from an athletic department with a modest operating budget of about $3 million — $160 million less than Texas gets to play with. No one at DBU would say how much money the private school allocates to baseball or how much it is paying Heefner.
Baseball is the only Division I athletic program at DBU, which succeeds in women’s soccer and golf in Division II. The Patriots, who boast the nation’s No. 2 RPI, are making their fourth regional trip in five seasons, but it’s their designation as tournament host that had the campus buzzing on a humid midweek afternoon.
Within 12 minutes of opening the ticket office at noon, all 800 chairback tickets had been spoken for. In turn, Smith altered plans and re- leased general admission bleacher seats to the public. Initially, they were to be sold daily at the ticket window.
All of this has been brewing for four years after DBU was denied hosting a super regional against California in 2011 because, frankly, its Patriot Field resembled a high school ballpark with aluminum bleachers and a tiny press box. Jason Krizan, of Pflugerville, was a senior on that team and set an NCAA record with 39 doubles.
“They wanted to make it known that next time we got into that situation, where we have a chance to host a regional or super regional, we’d have the facility to do it,” said Krizan, now a minor leaguer in the Tigers organization.
A year later, a rich donor opened his wallet. Andy Horner, whose late wife, Jean, loved DBU baseball, donated more than $2 million to the construction of a new facility. The remaining $5 million was raised through fundraising.
Heefner, who has been at the school for 11 seasons including eight as head coach, has constructed a roster mainly of players from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex who were overlooked by bigger programs. In seven years, he’s had 25 players get drafted. Not every player is a Christian, but all are required to attend Wednesday evening chapel.
Heefner warns recruits that if they desire football Saturdays and frat parties, they shouldn’t choose DBU.
“We don’t have those luxuries,” third baseman Nash Knight said. “We’re not that talented when we get here. We have to pass people in every area.”