One of the hardest things in life is saying goodbye. Whether it’s to a person or something that you love. The further you go, the harder it is to say goodbye, and for college baseball, the toughest place to say that to is Omaha.
Unfortunately for West Virginia, their time to say goodbye was Wednesday after falling to North Carolina for the second time. Watching the team take some of the dirt home and singing Country Roads is something those young men will never forget.
But there’s no reason for any West Virginia fan or player to hang their head. What this Mountaineer team accomplished this season was incredible: for the first time in program history, they reached the College World Series. No other team from Morgantown can say that.
When I look at what this baseball program has done over the last few years, they have had their fair share of firsts. Last season, they won their first-ever outright Big 12 regular season title, and two years ago, they won their first-ever regional. And if you go back to 2023, that was the year that started this incredible run when they won their first-ever share of a conference championship.
This is the fourth year in a row where West Virginia has made history. How many schools can say that? Not many, if any. Of course, I would be foolish not to mention former head coach Randy Mazey, who really built this program from the ground up.
Mazy was brought to Morgantown back in 2013 to get the program turned around as they were heading to the Big 12. Not only did he turn things around, but he also helped break in a new ballpark.
Prior to Randy Mazy’s arrival, West Virginia only made the postseason twice from 1988 to 2012. It took him less than five years to get West Virginia back in a regional.
Once he got them back in 2017, they went on to make three more regional appearances under his watch, including a super regional back in 2024. In his last eight years in Morgantown, West Virginia made the postseason four times before calling a career.
Randy ended up picking current head coach Steve Sabins as his replacement, and looking back, it was certainly the right call. Over the past two years, West Virginia has made back-to-back postseason appearances for just the second time in school history, and, of course, its first-ever trip to Omaha.
Looking over the past four seasons, West Virginia has made the postseason every year, and with the way things look in the Big 12 right now, it’s hard to argue that anyone else in the conference has had a better stretch of success during that time.
Head coach Steve Sabins is just 39 years old and has just won the 2026 National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association Mike Martin National Coach of the Year. The future is very bright in Morgantown when it comes to baseball. They are now a postseason contender year in and year out, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
