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By JACK HARRIS
Cronkite News

MESA – Grand Canyon baseball coach Andy Stankiewicz sat in the home dugout at his brand new GCU Ballpark, confidently gazing out over the stadium that he calls the “jewel of the desert” just days after capturing another Western Athletic Conference regular season championship.

For the first time in his tenure at GCU, he had a postseason tournament on his mind.

“We are very proud of the effort to win in the regular season. At the same time, prior to (this season) that was all we had, so that had to be enough,” Stankiewicz, said Tuesday,

His GCU program had become postseason eligible for the first time this season as it completed its step up to the NCAA Division I level.

“Now we know that that (a regular season title) is not enough.”

Three days later and 23 miles across town, Stankiewicz hid a stunned expression beneath the bill of his cap and behind his black shades. His team had been eliminated in two games of the double-elimination WAC Tournament at Hohokam Stadium, its year finished far before anyone would have guessed.

“It’s a bitter taste to finish the way we did,” Stankiewicz said. “We just didn’t perform well this weekend.”

GCU’s program has lived a charmed existence since Stankiewicz took over in 2012, the same year the athletic department announced all Antelopes teams would make the move up from NCAA Division II to Division I. In his seven seasons as coach, GCU has averaged over 30 wins per year, won three WAC regular season titles and entered its first conference tournament as the top-seed and favorite to earn an automatic NCAA Tournament berth.

On the eve of a first-ever WAC tournament appearance, Stankiewicz – who was named conference coach of the year for the second straight season – admitted “there’s a little bit of pressure” and said he was doing his best to manage the emotions of his players, many of whom had waited years to finally have a chance at postseason baseball (due to its move to D-I, GCU was on a probationary period for four years that made it ineligible for conference or NCAA tournaments).

“It’s unknown,” Stankiewicz said on Tuesday. “It’s our job as coaches to keep their emotions in check.”

They couldn’t.

During their first 13 innings on Thursday and Friday, the Antelopes were victims of bad luck and even worse defense. In a 3-2 loss to Seattle University in the opener, junior starter Jake Wong – a top 100 MLB draft prospect according to MLB.com – pitched well but his defense committed three errors that led to three unearned runs while the ‘Lopes offense recorded just six hits and only scored twice.

On Friday against Sacramento State, a third-inning error from second baseman Austin Bull led to another unearned run and put the Antelopes in a 1-0 hole early in their elimination game. Then the wheels fell off.

Sacramento State blew the game open in the fifth, scoring seven runs (the first earned runs GCU had allowed in the tournament) on three hits and five walks. The Hornets swatted a pair of two-RBI doubles and another two-RBI triple in the frame, each blow more deflating than the one before it. Down 8-0, GCU could hardly muster any sort of rally.

Less than 24 hours into the postseason, the ‘Lopes bowed out with an 8-2 loss. Season over, just like that.

“We’ve got to be better,” Stankiewicz said. “Instead of staying in the moment and staying in what we’ve got to do right now, we started thinking about, ‘Oh man. I gotta go to a regional’ and all that stuff. Nothing’s a given.”

There are brighter days ahead for the Antelopes. Its sparkling new stadium – which will expand to a capacity of 4,100 next year and is complete with a four-stall hitting cage and adjacent infield practice diamond – is the class of its conference. Its 2018 recruiting class ranks in the top 100 in the country, according to Perfect Game. Its perception around the state has never been better.

Greg Bordes is the director of baseball operations at the school and has been around Arizona college baseball for a long time, both as a player at Arizona State from 2005-08 as well as a volunteer assistant coach at his alma mater from 2013-14.

Sitting inside his office in GCU’s Tim Salmon Clubhouse – a spacious 5,000 square foot building impressive in its own right – on Tuesday, Bordes let out a little chuckle when asked about what GCU baseball used to be.

“It was almost nonexistent,” he said, remembering the old Brazell Field that GCU used to play in, a park he described as a non-descript dirt lot and not much else. “You knew there was the program. Other than that you didn’t hear much.”

Now?

“To see this place 10 years ago (since I was a player) and see what it’s turned into is pretty special,” Bordes said.

Baseball America college baseball writer Teddy Cahill has noticed GCU’s emergence from afar. He thinks the young program can not only “coexist” with the state’s two baseball powers, Arizona and ASU, but thrive.

“There are a lot of mid-major programs achieving at a high level in states where there are two major universities,” Cahill said. “They’ll be ready to pick up the players that Arizona and Arizona State aren’t quite as interested in for whatever reason and if they develop them, Grand Canyon can be a really strong program.”

Postseason success will have to wait another year though. Stankiewicz’s team simply couldn’t handle the mental pressure of the weekend’s do-or-die event.

“We’ll chalk it up to a learning experience as a ball club, as a program,” Stankiewicz said. “I’m looking forward to getting back here in years to come and doing a better job.”

He hopes the quick tournament exit is one of last growing pains the program will go through as it continues to pursue the NCAA tournament.

“Now we have a feeling of, ‘Hey, we’ve gotten here,’ ” Stankiewicz said before walking off the diamond for the final time this summer. “We’ve got some guys that will return next year. They’ll know what to expect. We’ve got to play well in the conference to get here but, we get back here again, I think the guys will understand the format of it, how it plays out in the yard, all the things that are involved.”

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