West Virginia is competing in the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, for the first time, a milestone that has captured the attention of an entire state. Supporters describe it as the team's first trip to the sport's biggest stage, and the achievement has turned a baseball run into a moment of pride that reaches far beyond the diamond and into communities across West Virginia.
The turnout from the fan base has been striking. Reports from Omaha put the number of Mountaineer supporters who have made the trip at anywhere from three thousand to four thousand, a remarkable figure given that the university itself was only able to allocate a couple of hundred tickets to its bigger donors. The rest of those fans have simply found their own way to Nebraska to be part of the team's first appearance.
Getting there has been an adventure in itself. The weather did not cooperate with flights, leaving many supporters stuck in Chicago after flying from Pittsburgh and trying to change planes at O'Hare. Rather than risk missing first pitch, Mountaineer fans who had never met one another teamed up at the ticket counters, recognizing each other by a ball cap or a T-shirt, and decided to rent cars together and drive the rest of the way to Omaha, taking shifts through the night.
The journey to this point has been a long one for the program. Supporters describe a team that rose from the verge of being dismantled into a winning culture, a transformation that took years to build. In earlier days the team played at what was known as Holly Field, a modest ground that many would have mistaken for a senior league or little league setup rather than the home of a major college program.
That changed with the arrival of a new home, Kendrick Family Ballpark. The facility is tied to Ken Kendrick of the Arizona Diamondbacks, a West Virginia University alumnus whose backing helped lift the program toward the level it has now reached. The upgrade in facilities mirrored the rise of the team itself, helping to create the winning environment that has carried the Mountaineers all the way to Omaha.
Part of what makes the run resonate so deeply is that West Virginia does not have a major professional sports team of its own. Whenever the Mountaineers do something special, people across the state grab hold of it, and supporters speak of representing a place defined by blue-collar work, by the people who bring coal out of the mines and natural gas out of the wells. The team has become, in a very real sense, the state's team.
It has also been some time since one of West Virginia's marquee programs reached this kind of stage, with fans recalling that the last comparable surge of excitement came when the basketball team made a Final Four run under Bob Huggins. Now, with the baseball team on the national stage, Mountaineer Nation has traveled in force, determined to be in the stands and turning the team's first College World Series into a shared celebration.