Wichita State baseball’s new $3.5 million facility is the ‘culmination of a dream’
One week before the start of baseball season, Wichita State held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday to showcase its new $3.5 million facility at Eck Stadium that the Shockers believe will restore their status among the elite in college baseball.
The 10,000-square foot performance facility features a strength and conditioning center, a spacious locker room, a player lounge, two training rooms, coaches offices and a classroom. The facility is connected to WSU’s remodeled dugout along the third-base line at Eck Stadium and also the indoor practice facility.
The new facility, as well as a new turf field at Eck Stadium, coincides with Eric Wedge’s first season as manager of the Shockers, who open the season with a three-game series next Friday at Northwestern State.
“It just adds to the excitement because this is an unbelievable complex,” Wedge said. “When you look at the stadium, the new turf, the indoor facility, this brand new facility and just the proximity of it all, put that all together and we are one of the top Division I baseball facilities in the country.”
More than 40 former WSU baseball players donated at least $10,000 to help complete the “Phase V” project, which has been more than a decade in the making. Here’s why the project is a game-changer for current and future Shockers and why so many past players were motivated to make it happen.
‘The culmination of a dream’
Gene Stephenson can put things into perspective real fast.
“There was nothing here when we first came, not even a place to practice,” said Stephenson, who resurrected the program in 1978 and coached it through 2013. “There was no ball, there was no bat, there was no glove, there were no players.”
More than four decades after starting from nothing, Stephenson marveled at the state-of-the-art facilities now at WSU.
“It’s the culmination of a dream,” Stephenson said, looking around.
The new facility was originally supposed to be built in 2009 alongside the indoor practice facility, but WSU ran out of money and the project was put on hold. The running joke within the program is that every recruit from the past decade has been pitched coming to WSU in part because of a facility that didn’t materialize until this year.
Fundraising dried up and a push to finish the project wasn’t renewed until 2016, when long-time pitching coach Brent Kemnitz retired from coaching after 38 years at WSU and transitioned to a new role in the athletic department. That’s when Kemnitz took it upon himself to spearhead the Phase V project revival.
“We needed to get it done because it was almost embarrassing at that point having it out there for so long,” Kemnitz said. “We recruited guys and they would remind us, ‘Hey, you showed me this in high school’ and they played here for five years and have been gone for three.”
Kemnitz was not met by eager donors, in part, because WSU stopped winning. Since 2009, the Shockers have played in just one NCAA Regional. He knew he would have to tap into what had made WSU so special during its peak years to make a change.
“It was tough to get the ball rolling because we weren’t going to regionals, we weren’t going to Omaha,” Kemnitz said. “There was honestly a lot of apathy.”
“It was a difficult situation in which to raise money,” Stephenson added. “It’s always easier and people are much more willing to give when you’re winning and winning big.”
‘Your pride is apart of the program forever’
To understand why Nate Robertson is invested so much in the Wichita State baseball program nearly 21 years after leaving it, you first have to understand what it meant to be a Shocker to the Wichita native.
“It was a boyhood dream to play for Wichita State,” Robertson said. “I remember when I was 12 years old in 1989 watching (Eric) Wedge hoist up (Greg) Brummett after striking out the last Longhorn and I was like, ‘Man, that is where I want to go.’ I remember when I signed and started playing pro ball, people would be like, ‘Oh, you’re a Wichita State guy.’ Everybody knew the Shockers. It was something to be proud of.”
Braden Looper (1994-96) is another former Shocker standout who remembers his time in Wichita fondly following a 12-year professional career that saw him become a two-time World Series champion.
“For me personally, the most fun I ever had playing baseball was during my time at Wichita State,” Looper said. “And I pitched in the World Series and there were some cool individual experiences in the majors, but the overall experience at WSU was just so much fun. So it just felt like a no-brainer to me to give back to where it all started for me. If it wasn’t for Wichita State, I wouldn’t have had the career that I had.”
Robertson and Looper were just two of more than 40 former WSU players to donate at least $10,000 to the Phase V project. In the fundraising world, Kemnitz said that type of support from alumni is “unheard of” and WSU athletic Darron Boatright called it “an anomaly.”
But what Kemnitz discovered was that once he secured the support of prominent players like Robertson and Looper, then other former players were more motivated to chip in. The common theme among the former players was that they were motivated to do whatever they could to help the program return as a nationally-prominent program again.
“When you play for Wichita State, your name and your pride is apart of the program forever,” Robertson said. “For a lot of us, it’s tough to see a program that had so much pride and so much tradition and such a winning culture fail. And it’s been failing.
“I think that’s why guys were willing to invest so we can get our program back to what it should look like. It’s not there right now, but we all believe we’ve got the right people in place to get the job done.”
‘It’s only utopia if you win’
In the mind of athletic director Darron Boatright, there isn’t a program in the American Athletic Conference with better baseball facilities than Wichita State.
“When you talk about on-campus baseball facilities and amenities, this puts us right back up there at the top in the country,” Boatright said. “And that’s what we expect from our baseball program. So when you have those expectations, your commitment level needs to match them. I think this project proves our commitment is solid.”
The improved facilities should lead to better recruiting, a difference that first-year manager Eric Wedge has already noticed since the new facility opened in January.
“It’s already helped us in recruiting with a few kids coming through here and visiting and walking around and seeing everything,” Wedge said. “After touring the place, it’s hard not to grab your attention. So it’s already been a difference-maker for us.”
Not only should it help with future Shockers, but it helps the current Shockers the most.
Wedge loves how much time has been saved since the new facility connects to the indoor practice facility and Tyler Field. He also likes that all of the coaches’ offices are connected. For the players, the expansive locker room is reminiscent of the MLB level and the training rooms, weight room, classroom and refueling station are all top-notch.
“Everything about this new facility has a big-league mentality, which is what I think Wedge likes,” WSU junior Ross Cadena said. “Wedge has brought that big-league mentality with him and I think this new facility addresses that too.”
Stephenson has been inside numerous major-league and top-tier college baseball locker rooms and he said that Wichita State’s “compares favorably to any of them.” He says there is no doubt that it can be a potential game-changer for the program to return to its winning ways.
But that’s the catch.
No matter how fancy the facilities are, at the end of the day, the Shockers have to win again.
“This place can be utopia, but it’s only utopia if you win,” Stephenson said. “Now we have to go out on that field and play up to this facility and be the best we can be on and off the field. I’m looking forward to seeing it happen.”
This story was originally published February 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
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