Grand Canyon baseball’s Brazell Stadium will get a facelift

by Adnan Alam
  • Slug: Sports-GCU Brazell, 775 words.
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By ZACH ALVIRA
Cronkite News

PHOENIX — Manicured grass and modern buildings line the campus of Grand Canyon University, but a trip to the west side of the campus reveals a hidden gem.

It’s Brazell Stadium, the school’s baseball facility.

Named after the founder of GCU’s baseball program, Dave Brazell, the stadium opened in 1962 with not much more than wooden benches and a chain-link backstop.

Renovations to the field in 1985 added new seating. The field, which was dedicated to Brazell in 1987, is the oldest baseball facility in the Western Athletic Conference. And it is one of few buildings on campus that shows the age of the burgeoning university.

But GCU coach Andy Stankiewicz sees that as an advantage.

“We want the guys that played here to come back and say ‘this is where I played,’ ” he said. “We worked hard to build this place. Coach (Brazell) certainly did.”

There are upgrades on the way.

As part of GCU’s “10 in 2” program which is set to be completed in 2018, 10 new athletic facilities will be built in a two year span. That includes Brazell Stadium, which will receive a major face lift at the conclusion of the 2017 season. The renovations will expand the seating capacity of the stadium from 1,500 to 3,500, adding two levels of bowl-style seating and a grassy berm area.

Mike Vaught, the athletic director at Grand Canyon University, was unavailable for comment regarding the preservation of the program’s history after the renovations. That includes whether Brazell’s name will be on the new facility.

Brazell is an Antelopes icon. He arrived on campus in 1951 to become coach of the basketball team. In 1958, he led the Antelopes hoops team to the only undefeated season in school history.

He created the baseball program in 1953.

“We started from scratch,” said Brazell, 91. “We were 0-13 that first year. We lost so much that when we had a rain out, we had a victory celebration.”

He led the team for 28 years with a combined record of 728-385-8. In 1980, Brazell captured the school’s first national championship at the NAIA level.

At the conclusion of the 1980 season, Brazell passed off the coaching duties to Gil Stafford, who won back-to-back NAIA National Championships in 1981 and 1982.

“They had won the championship the year before and (Brazell) had started to establish the ‘Canyon way’ of going hard and playing hard,” Stafford said. “I wanted to keep the winning tradition going.”

The 1982 season also saw the program’s most recent no-hitter from Keith Baker, who is now the senior associate athletics director for business operations at GCU. It came on March 11,1982 against Nebraska Wesleyan. It was Baker’s first start.

“I was (usually) a middle reliever and had only pitched a couple of innings,” Baker said. “I was just trying to pace myself. I just took it one pitch at a time.”

At the conclusion of the 1982 school year, Baker became the sports information director. There, he witnessed the baseball team’s fourth and final NAIA National Championship in 1986, as Stafford led the Antelopes to 55-18 record.

In 1991, the baseball program made the jump from NAIA to NCAA Division I. It was the first time a program had ever gone directly to the top division from outside of the NCAA.

Although the team struggled initially against NCAA Division 1 competition, in 1998 the Antelopes won the Western Athletic Conference North Division title before dropping to Division II the next season.

“The leap from NAIA to Division I was a huge attempt,” Stafford said. “When we went to Division II we had to sit out a year which was hard for the players but we ended up making the playoffs the next year.”

Stafford led the Antelopes until Dave Stapleton took over the coaching position in 2001. Stapleton was at the helm for 10 years until he was relieved of his duties in the middle of the 2011 season.

Stankiewicz was hired in 2012 as just the fourth head coach in the program’s 64-year history. Now in his sixth year, Stankiewicz has carried on the winning tradition Brazell established at GCU with a Division II National Championship appearance in 2013 and successful seasons in the WAC in 2014 and 2015.

The growth of the GCU athletic program continues. Many of the buildings and facilities around campus have received revamped looks during the school’s transition to Division 1, and Brazell believes it is great for the university.

“It’s unbelievable, I come down here every week and when I do there is another new building,” Brazell said. “I love it.”

Grand Canyon baseball coach Andy Stankiewicz (left) greets the program’s founder, Dave Brazell, at the stadium named in Brazell’s honor. The facility is expected to get a facelift after the 2017 season. (Photo courtesy Grand Canyon University)