Group meetings on the mound from that 2016 College World Series team featuring Kevin Ginkel are now group texts, led by his pitching coach of the time, Dave Lawn.
Lawn, now at Texas Christian, remembers a game at Arizona State in which Ginkel showed is true potential.
“We started him up there, and as he’s warming up, were though that this is different,” said Ginkel.
The catcher at the time was current Houston Astro Cesar Salazar. Ginkel proceeded to throw a 91-pitch, two-hit shutout.
“The funny story about that is that 85 pitches were fastballs. It was just fastball, fastball, fastball.”
Since then, Ginkel has developed other pitches to become a key contributor out of the bullpen. As for Lawn, he’s been around success before. He as the head coach of Servite High School in California, the same school where Wildcat football players Noah Fifita, Tetairoa McMillan, Jacob Manu, and Keyan Burnett all played.
“That league is so loaded. They used to call it the NFC West it was so good.”
One day, those players may actually be in the NFC West. Today, it’s Ginkel representing the University of Arizona in the World Series, and a proud former pitching coach watching from afar.