Happy hosts: NCAA baseball regional returns to Columbia, USC

The morning sun beat down Thursday on Founders Park. The air had that thick, hot, South Carolina-summer quality, and the garnet seats gleamed bright in the light.

A year ago, this field was silent. Not so Thursday morning.

The dull thud of a fungo bat propelled balls toward Gamecocks baseball players taking infield. Coaches shouted jokes at players, giving them some lip as everyone seemed loose, free and easy. One year ago, Columbia experienced a spring without NCAA Tournament baseball for the first time in 16 years, and everyone seemed happy to have it back.

“It’s fun when you get to play at home,” South Carolina ace Clarke Schmidt said. “Especially when you have an atmosphere when you’ve been playing the weekend series here in the SEC, it kind of shows you a little bit what it’s going to be like in the postseason.

“The atmosphere is like none other. We know what to expect. It’s going to be a lot of fun, high-tension.”

The Gamecocks pitcher pointed out he’d never played a postseason game at Founders Park. South Carolina has turned over a lot of players since the 2014 trip, but Schmidt noted he and his teammates are used to playing in front of 8,000-plus fans, something UNC-Wilmington, Rhode Island and Duke seldom do.

The return of a regional to Columbia meant the usual flurry of activity to prepare to welcome three teams to the stadium, but associate athletics director for facilities and operations Jeff Davis called it a welcome return after a “strange” absence last spring.

“We’ve become accustomed to it,” Davis said. “To be back here this year is great for our staff. Everybody rallies around and just goes beyond the call of duty to put on a first-class regional, and we probably feel we put on one of the best regionals in the country.”

Davis said the staff goes into planning in the middle of the season, once the team’s record points toward the probability of hosting. There’s a meeting two weeks before selection to put the various groups on call, so by the time the selection show happens, the only step is to send visiting teams packets letting them know everything from where they’ll be staying to how their laundry will be handled.

The group that mobilizes for the up to seven games is more than 100 strong. They handle duties including field crew, stadium operations, security, parking and more. As Davis put it: all hands on deck.

He said the stadium will feature a few cosmetic changes, including NCAA signage and a return of the bunting the team uses opening day.

It’s a bit of a change from a year ago, when the field crew was getting ready for a summer of camps.

Gamecocks coach Chad Holbrook has been hesitant to refer to what happened last year. He speaks like a man who wants this team and its players to stand on their own, free of that larger history.

But for a program hosting its sixth regional in seven years, he put a lot of weight on the privilege.

“It’s not easy to host when you play in the SEC. It’s not easy to host no matter what league you play in,” Holbrook said. “But the fact that we’re playing at home doesn’t guarantee us anything, and our players have got to remember that. You’ve got to win and you’ve got to play well. It’s not just going to happen because we’re playing at Founders Park. We learned that a couple years ago.”

This story was originally published June 2, 2016 at 8:59 PM with the headline "Happy hosts: NCAA baseball regional returns to Columbia, USC."