Greer’s Years Looking Better and Better
A buddy who has been a Wake Forest fan since birth is convinced that the greatest accomplishment in the history of Deacon sports was the three ACC baseball championships George Greer’s teams won over four seasons, in 1998, 1999 and 2001. Based on how hard it was to win one before, and how hard it has been since, he might, for once in his life, actually be right.
The Deacons have three more games this season, against Miami this weekend at Wake Forest Baseball Park. But in effect, their season is already over. They’ve been eliminated from the eight-team ACC Tournament and at 22-27 overall shouldn’t be holding out any hopes for a post-season berth. Over Rick Rembielak’s five seasons as head coach, Wake has played in the NCAA Tournament one time, when it lost to California-Irvine and Texas in a regional in 2007.
Wake Forest was a young team this season, and its defense was too porous to support a staff that could never overcome rocky performances by veterans Brad Kledzik and Garrett Bullock. And the Deacons didn’t hit well, not even in their new hitter-friendly ball park. They’ve scored 322 runs, fewest in the ACC.
So how George Greer managed what he did 10 years ago is looking more and more impressive, especially in a sport where scholarships are split among a number of players. The NCAA allows a Division I college baseball program 11.7 scholarships. Few recruits get a full ride. Many get a half, or less. So let’s say you have a chance to play baseball at Wake Forest on half-scholarship. That means you and your family are paying between 20 and 25 grand per year for the grand privilege of playing baseball for the Deacons. The players who play at the public schools, the North Carolinas, N.C. States and Clemsons, pay less than half that. So the diamond is clearly tilted.
Greer, and his chief recruiter, Bobby Moranda, took advantage of a recruiting pool into which Wake Forest no longer casts a net. The best Wake Forest teams had a modest number of junior-college players who helped fill the gaps and keep the team competitive. The one who had the most impact was probably Cory Sullivan, who pitched eight innings and hit two homers against N.C. State in the ACC championship of 2001. Sullivan played in the majors for four seasons with the Colorado Rockies, and is now with the Class AAA Buffalo Bison of the New York Mets organization. Sullivan came through the especially productive pipeline from Cypress Junior College in California.
The school began placing restrictions on recruiting junior college players even before George Greer stepped down after the 2004 season. Rembielak said Wake has no policy preventing the recruitment of junior college players, just a general philosophy that he, for the most part, agrees with. My own opinion is that he and the school should revisit that position. I’m well aware of the stigma many schools have against junior-college athletes, based mostly on the number of players in football and basketball who attend junior colleges because they’re not eligible by NCAA standards coming out of high school. On the other hand, there are many reasons for an athlete to attend a junior college, especially in baseball where he remains eligible for the professional draft each season instead of having to commit to three seasons of playing for a major-college program.
Wake Forest will never have any program dominated by junior-college recruits. That’s not who the school is. But, in my mind, it would be a good move to sprinkle a few junior college players over the baseball roster to help compensate for the staggering disadvantages of a private school playing baseball in a conference dominated by public institutions.