When you are a college baseball coach and the remaining portion of your contract is measured in mere months, not years, the instinct toward self preservation suggests something other than what the University of Hawaii’s Mike Trapasso did.
When defending national champion and third-ranked Vanderbilt calls and says, ‘Hey, I know the contract says you were scheduled to come to our place in 2023, but could you come this year instead?” caution suggests you mumble a quick “Sorry, wrong number” and hang up.
The dog-eared coaches handbook practically demands it.
Especially when the schedule originally had you playing Sacramento State in the friendly confines of Les Murakami Stadium, not traipsing more than 8,600 miles round trip to and from a place where visitors rarely win, sandwiched between two series with Pac-12 opponents.
Yet, to his credit, taking up the deeper challenge is what Trapasso chose to do. This despite facing a countdown on the final season of his current contract for which no extension beyond this season has been announced. And not for a bag full of money, either.
The Rainbow Warriors acquitted themselves quite well in Nashville, Tenn., over the weekend, winning a game Saturday and going into the 11th inning of another before losing Sunday to go 1-2 on the trip.
Overall, the ’Bows are 8-5 heading into this week’s home series with Oregon.
Had they stayed home last weekend, the ’Bows were looking at the possibility of going 3-0 or, at least, 2-1 against the Hornets. That’s no small consideration when your career record is 509-504. And you are about to be measured by season’s end on your win-loss record and the chances of extending a 19-year tenure to 20 may be riding on how the numbers eventually stack up.
Baseball, perhaps more so than any sport other than men’s volleyball that the Big West now offers, is usually where the competition is the fiercest and most respected on the national level. So the nonconference portion, where you are free to manipulate the schedule’s degree of difficulty, provides the most opportunity to fatten up the win column.
But there is also something to be said for taking the bolder approach of using non-league games to prep for conference play. Especially when you believe you have a worthy team.
Historically, Trapasso has played a competitive schedule and been willing to cross a number of time zones and step into tough environments to do it. Certainly more so than some of his peers who have considerably more cushion in their contracts. He has looked at it as team building and memory making.
Over the past six years, UH’s baseball overall strength of schedule has ranked as high as 43rd and, on average, 136th among 300 Division I teams, according to the NCAA. One year it was No. 1 heading into conference.
When Trapasso announced the original two-game series with Vanderbilt more than a year ago — 2022 in Manoa and ’23 in Nashville — some snickered that it was easy enough to do since he might not be around by then to actually have to play them.
So, it would be both prescient and fitting if the experience and confidence the ’Bows gained from the weekend’s exertions in Nashville turned out to help provide the foundation for a successful season.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
