PHOENIX — From Jan. 31 to Feb. 3, top NAIA baseball programs across the country competed in the East/West Challenge in the Phoenix-metro area with schools Benedictine Mesa and Arizona Christian serving as hosts.
This week another event, the Cajun Collision in Louisiana hosted by No. 5 LSU-Shreveport, is highlighted even more programs — a couple of them which also competed in the East/West Challenge.
These events bring programs to the baseball field to compete against one another who otherwise wouldn’t see each other until the end of the season in the NAIA Opening Round, presented by Avista, or the Avista NAIA World Series.
The early-season events helped facilitate some out-of-conference rivalries that have become engraved in the last five-to-10 years of the sport. It’s also helping to bring more eyes on NAIA-level baseball than ever before.
Schools across the NAIA vary in the availability and quality of radio and streaming broadcasts. Some are pay-to-watch or pay-to-listen, others aren’t, making it hard to have a complete vision and knowledge on game results and statistics, especially compared to the NCAA Division I level.
Having the games all in one centralized location helps make the process of streaming and radio broadcasts easier (still not perfect). It also gives families a chances to watch their players compete.
In the case of the East/West Challenge this year, some teams representing the East went as far west as they will all season. Oscar Martinez, father of Tennessee Wesleyan shortstop Marco Martinez, lives in southern California. The games in the East/West Challenge were the closest Marco was to home this season, and the least distance Oscar had to travel to see his son play.
This is the case for several families, and also part of the reason top programs across the country haven’t played each other frequently in years past before events of the ilk of the Challenge and the Collision.
Baseball has always been a regionalized sport, especially on the collegiate level. The amount of games and equipment makes travel and accommodation costs add up after a while for athletic departments.
Schools at the NAIA level, with the exception of institutions with wealthy alumni and boosters, typically have less money to operate within their athletic budgets than their NCAA counterparts.
Having a week where games are centralized to one location or within a designated metro area helps alleviate some of those costs.
“I think it’s great, really for the sport,” Robby Gutierrez of NAIA Ball said. “One of the things I think is really big for the sport is that baseball is already regionalized. ... Small college baseball as a whole is hyper regionalized. You might just know the teams in your conference. … Everyone knows the big schools: you know Georgia Gwinnett, Southeastern, L-C, Tennessee Wesleyan, all those big names nationally at this level, what we would call bluebloods.
What this round-robin does is it’s given us an opportunity for these teams that are maybe hyper-regionalized to step out-of-their comfort zone and see a different type of baseball.”
For those bluebloods and other top programs, the Challenge provides an opportunity to test themselves early against other upper-echelon teams. LCSC coach Jake Taylor has never shied away from tough out of conference schedules. The Warriors this season were slated to play two more top-25 teams in California this week before games were canceled due to inclement weather and will play a four-game series against No. 5 LSU-Shreveport starting April 12.
The highest-ranked teams on LCSC’s schedule outside of the East/West Challenge, the California-based teams and LSUS are conference foes British Columbia and Oregon Tech, which both received votes in the preseason coaches’ poll.
Taylor has expressed how he believes the level of competition preps his team for the rest of the season.
The East/West Challenge, specifically, was the brainchild of Arizona Christian coach Joe McDonald and Southeastern coach Adrian Dinkel.
The two coaches came up with the idea two years ago and Southeastern hosted the inaugural version of the event in 2023 in Lakeland, Fla.
This year it was Arizona Christian, Benedictine Mesa hosting and next year it will be back in Florida.
“When me and Joe put this thing together, it was trying to have all the elite teams we could have in this,” Dinkel said. “And get this thing done early and call it a mini World Series early in the season. I think so far it’s been successful. ... and hopefully we continue to make it better and make it the best event in the country at our level.”
Hosting the Challenge hasn’t been the smoothest of sailing in its two years of existence. This year, games were supposed to be spread out across Gene Autry Park in Mesa, Greenway High School in Phoenix and Apollo High School in Glendale.
Rain on the night of Day 2 of the Challenge forced all the remaining games that weren’t canceled to take place at Greenway High School. Which, in McDonald’s exact words, was “the only field in Phoenix not covered in water” in the last two days of games.
McDonald has over two decades experience being involved in the planning and designing of athletic events and didn’t feel adjusting the schedule for the rain was too difficult. Plus, his Firestorm are one of the programs Gutierrez mentioned which got the benefit of seeing a “different kind of baseball.”
All of Arizona Christian’s scheduled games this season are in California or Arizona. Hope International, Vanguard, Benedictine Mesa and Ottawa (Ariz.) are the only teams the Firestorm are scheduled to play outside of the Challenge that are either ranked or received votes.
“It’s the premier event of the year where every team is ranked or receiving votes,” McDonald said. “It’s almost a preview of some guaranteed teams to be at the World Series. ... That’s why we put it together, to have that pre-confercence, beginning of the season mix of the top teams in the country. There’s some other really good events out there. ... Early on we like to play as many different teams as possible and that’s the concept for every team (at the Challenge).”
These events also help the sport grow at the NAIA level. Connections, especially in baseball, are everything. Across the sport, from the majors to the minors to all levels of NCAA and NAIA, almost everyone knows someone with a connection to a person in a top position at some nationally recognized teams and programs. Even some institutions have NAIA history — former World Series champs and now-NCAA Division I school Sam Houston State, for example.
Events like these facilitate those connections that help the sport grow. In recent years, with the MLB draft being shortened, the COVID-19 extra year of eligibility (junior college got two years extra eligibility) and the transfer portal, non-blueblood programs have been left picking up the pieces while trying to retain talented rosters that are in constant upheaval.
But the more access there is to the sport and the more networks being created, the more likely coaches are to get in contact with talented players or their high school coaches. This will help recruiting efforts, which will lead to even more talented players across the sport than there already is.
“This sport is really small when you look at it as a whole,” Gutierrez said. “This world of college baseball is really, really small. ... You have possible connections everywhere. ... You can play the game of six degrees of separation with a lot of people, a lot of teams and a lot of coaches.”
The networking within the families is important, as well. Just at the Challenge, LCSC had families or friends of players Jake Gish, Nick Seamons, Carter Booth and more present.
Gutierrez shared his experiences as an NAIA player getting to meet and spend time with teammates’ families and share in different cultures and experiences. On a micro level, within the communities of the schools, those family connections play a big role and can make the distance from home or from families just a little more manageable.
NAIA-level athletics has almost always had an uphill climb. From players looking to go professional, public access to games and finances, it’s always going to be a slower-moving road than the NCAA.
But, with events like the Challenge and the Collision and, of course, the World Series, NAIA college baseball is in a great place. And with the success of all the aforementioned events, it’ll only get better.
Kowatsch can be contacted at 208-848-2268, tkowatsch@lmtribune.com or on Twitter @Teren_Kowatsch.
