The announcement came out Thursday that the Tennessee baseball team, as of now, has a top 20 recruiting class for the upcoming season.
As a baseball fan, this excites me.
In the three years I have been a student and journalist at Tennessee, the baseball team is 79-86 with the only one winning season, 2010. In that season the Vols were just 30-26 and didn’t even make the SEC tournament.
I long to have quality college baseball in Knoxville. It kills me going into every spring looking at the schedule and thinking, “sweep, sweep, well maybe Tennessee can steal one here.”
I’m tired of it. Not even that I’m a Tennessee fan, because I’m not. As a fan of baseball it has gotten old watching the Vols lose 10-6 to Presbyterian and get swept by in-state rival Vanderbilt 10-1, 10-1, and 19-3 like in 2011.
It seems that things have started to turn around for the Vols, though, as the top 20 recruiting class can attest to.
I gave a nod to coach Dave Serrano recently, sort of, for having a good program, just one that people don’t come to see. And it’s hard to blame them, since the product hasn’t been up to standards recently to warrant it.
But, I truly believe things will start to change under Serrano. His track record speaks volumes for him, unlike some other Tennessee coaches when they were hired.
He’s been to seven College World Series’s as a coach and led at both UC Irvine in 2007 and Cal State Fullerton in 2009. He is also one of eleven coaches to ever make World Series appearances as head coach.
Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty of work left to do on Rocky Top to compete every weekend with SEC competition.
The SEC has won three of the last four championships, two by South Carolina, and the Gamecocks were the runner-ups last year.
Also, the Vols do have a top 20 recruiting class, but there are eight SEC schools that place ahead of the Volunteers.
Vanderbilt boasts the No. 1 class and Georgia, Alabama and Auburn all have top 10 classes as well. LSU, Texas A&M, South Carolina and Kentucky also all rank above Tennessee.
There is still some building that needs to take place to catapult the Volunteers to the level of these programs, but the foundation has been set.
Tennessee baseball might not be an SEC title contender just yet, but at least they will be a team that’s worth going to go watch on March and April weekends.
— Austin Bornheim is a senior in journalism and electronic media. He can be reached at [email protected].
