Boise State baseball players ‘heartbroken’ after university’s decision to cut program
Boise State baseball players woke up Thursday morning to the news that the program many of them spent the better part of two years rebuilding had been disbanded.
Shortstop Cole Posey was asleep in the car during a road trip in his home state of Texas when his phone chimed to life with a flood of text messages.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow. Everybody is pretty heartbroken,” Posey said by phone on Friday. “We went through so much together. It becomes a brotherhood like anything else, and I think that will be the toughest part, missing those guys.”
First baseman Joe Yorke was asleep on the couch in a three-bedroom house he’s sharing with six teammates from Boise State — all of whom are playing summer baseball in Salt Lake City.
“One second I’m asleep on the couch about to play a summer game, and the next I don’t know where my next college baseball game is going to be played,” Yorke said.
Boise State announced Thursday it was cutting the baseball and swim and dive teams as part of an anticipated $3 million reduction to the athletic department budget due to revenue lost during the coronavirus pandemic.
Players on the baseball team said the decision came as a shock, and no matter how the news was delivered, it was tough to hear.
“I was just crushed. Absolutely devastated,” said Kase Ogata, a graduate of Rocky Mountain High in Meridian. “We worked so hard to build this program and (coach) Gary (Van Tol) has put his life into all of this. It’s truly just sad.”
Rebuilding Boise State’s program
This spring, the baseball team took the field in regular season games for the first time since it was disbanded in 1980. In 2017, the university dropped wrestling to pursue baseball, and the Broncos went 9-5 this year before coronavirus forced the cancellation of the remainder of the season.
“We were building something special, and we all felt really good about where we were going,” Posey said.
Boise State Athletic Director Curt Apsey said Thursday that eliminating the teams will save the department about $2.2 million. He didn’t specify where the rest would come from.
“I don’t think the budget challenge is over with,” he said. “The university and the athletic department are going to continue to make sure that we are looking at a budget that we can balance currently and then also make sure we can sustain that going forward.”
Expenses for the swim and dive team in 2019 totaled $917,283, according to documents obtained by the Statesman through a public records request.
Going off Apsey’s $2.2 million figure, the baseball team’s expenses were somewhere around $1.3 million, and that was likely to grow, given the sheer number of games in a season and the plans to build a stadium.
From a fiscal sense, many of the players understand Boise State’s reasoning, but that doesn’t make accepting it any easier.
“Baseball is the most expensive men’s sport that makes the least amount of money, so from a business standpoint, it makes sense,” Yorke said. “But from a people standpoint, you have 32 guys who were pumped to be part of Bronco nation and this program and it was taken away from us just like that.”
Fundraising not an option
Not long after Thursday’s announcement, pitcher Gavin Gorrell started a GoFundMe page in an effort to save the program and raised $420 in 20 minutes. It was still active Saturday morning, and $4,462 had been donated.
An online petition was also circulating Thursday with a goal of collecting 250 signatures. By Saturday morning, there were 2,000 and the goal was extended to 2,500.
Fundraising efforts brought in $1.5 million to save Bowling Green’s baseball program after it was cut in June, but on Thursday, Apsey said fundraising wasn’t an option at Boise State.
He said given the amount of funds that would have to be raised annually and the general difficulty of doing so during a pandemic make it an unsustainable solution.
“I just don’t know how a commitment can be made for years to come,” Apsey said. “What happens in year two or three? We don’t see that as a sustainable business model to keep programs alive.”
What they called the athletic department’s unwillingness to make an effort to save the program was the most disheartening part of the past few days, players said.
“The most frustrating thing about it to me is that Boise State has the mantra and the spirit of being the underdog and always finding a way to compete and be in ball games no matter what,” Posey said. “That was something that really appealed to me, just that fighting spirit. I didn’t see that, and that was probably the most disappointing thing to me.”
Yorke said there were several promises Boise State made to the program and didn’t keep, including an on-campus stadium.
“It didn’t seem like they were fully backing us,” he said. “The question is even if we do raise money and get the funding, would we even want to be part of a program that doesn’t have the school’s backing?”
On Thursday, Apsey was definitive in regards to the stadium, which he said the university has cleared a lot for. In 2018, Boise State purchased two properties just south of Albertsons Stadium to clear the way for construction between Euclid and Denver avenues.
“Without a program, we’re obviously not going to have a ballpark,” he said.
Apsey also said as part of the decision to reinstate the sport, the university made a commitment to help the athletic department pay for the stadium, and financial shortfalls due to COVID-19 would have made it difficult to live up to that commitment.
“The university, obviously, is going to have bigger issues that we’re going to have to tackle in terms of funding,” Apsey said.
Homegrown program
For Ogata, playing at Boise State was always his dream. His father, Ty, played football for the Broncos, and several members of his family are alumni. He said Friday, though, that he’s come to the realization that his dream revolved more around who he played for in college, rather than where he played.
He has a long history with Van Tol. He first took the field for the coach as a member of the Idaho Cubs when he was 13 years old.
“From day one, I wanted to play for Boise State, and it just so happens that the best coach in the world was there,” Ogata said. “He’s like a second father to me. It’s almost to the point where it’s hard to want to play for anybody besides Gary, but that’s just the reality of it right now.”
Ogata was a member of the Dirty Dozen — the Broncos’ original 12 signees, who spent the 2018-19 academic year on campus, training and playing a couple of exhibition games.
He is one of eight players on Boise State’s roster who played their high school ball in Idaho. In 2017, he was the first player to verbally commit to the newly reinstated program.
“When I heard Boise State was bringing baseball back and Gary was going to be the coach, I didn’t need to hear anything else,” he said.
Prior to taking over at Boise State, Van Tol spent 17 years coaching at the collegiate level and 10 years in the pros. He spent the 2013 and 2014 seasons as the manager of the Boise Hawks and followed the club to Eugene, Oregon, in 2015.
He was tasked with rebuilding the Broncos’ program from scratch, and he left an indelible impression on the players he brought in to help him get it off the ground.
“The part for me that hurts the most is not being able to play for this staff again and with these guys again,” Yorke said. “Gary did such a great job bringing in great guys, and I made friendships that will last a lifetime.”
Yorke lands at Cal Poly
Boise State plans to honor the scholarship of any player who decides to remain enrolled as a student, and any who move on to another school will be immediately eligible to play, per NCAA rules.
Those who opt to go elsewhere are left scrambling for a home in a midst of a pandemic, which is preventing them from physically visiting other schools.
Several players have already entered the transfer portal, including Ogata, who said he has spoken to a couple of Division-I programs, and Posey, who has fielded calls from six teams.
One former Bronco has already found a new home, and it happens to be close to his hometown.
On Friday, Yorke announced he has committed to California Polytechnic State University, which competes in the Big West Conference and is about three hours south of where he grew up in Campbell, California.
Yorke is the first Boise State baseball player to commit to another program. He called Cal Poly one of his dream schools, and now that he’s found a landing spot, he’s determined to help his former teammates do the same. He already supplied the Cal Poly coaches with contact information for several of them.
“It’s a great program, a young program,” Yorke said. “They’ve got a great group of freshman guys. It reminds me a lot of us at Boise State where that core freshman group is huge. It’s a great spot and a great opportunity for me to continue playing baseball.”
In Salt Lake City, Yorke is living with Ogata and former Boise State players Matt Farman, Grant Kerry and Dawson Martin. Their sixth roommate is incoming freshman pitcher Matty Fung — one of four recruits the Broncos signed this year, including graduate transfer pitcher John Boushelle.
Fung’s first thought when Kerry woke him up with the news of the program’s demise was that the house was being robbed. His second thought was about Van Tol, who gave him a shot when few others were willing.
“Gary was the only coach that bought into my size,” Fung said. “I’m pretty undersized, and he still believed in me and that I could grow and mature along the way. I could tell he really wanted me there.”
Fung said he’s going to reach out to a couple other programs that recruited him when he was in high school, but Boise State was the only team that offered him a scholarship. He’s also considering enrolling in a junior college near his home in Foster City, California.
With the program they came to town to build now gone, Fung isn’t the only Boise State baseball player left with limited options.
“You’ve got two choices,” Ogata said. “You can be done or you can continue chasing the dream.”
