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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2009 > May > 29 > Entry
Loving the dog piling days at Wright State.
It’s all about the dog piling, Rob Cooper said.
As he prepared his Wright State baseball team for tonight’s NCAA Tournament regional opener against Texas Christian in Fort Worth, the Raiders head coach talked about both the success some of WSU’s marquee athletic programs are now experiencing and especially the experience his baseball guys are getting this weekend.
“Just 64 Division I teams still are playing baseball and we’re one of them, so right there alone that’s a neat deal,” Cooper said. “When you have a group of guys who put in as much time and energy as these guys and they come together and commit to something, you want to see them celebrate. You want to see them get rewarded.
“I know what it’s like to go to the Tournament. I know what it’s like to dog pile, so when you get a chance to see your players do it, well, it’s something no one can ever take from them. Something those guys will never forget.”
To the uninitiated, joyous players dog pile — dive on top of each other somewhere near the pitcher’s mound until they are stacked up like some kind of sub sandwich with all the overflowing trimmings — after the final out of a big victory.
Cooper has a collage of pictures on the wall of his Nischwitz Stadium office and dressing quarters and one photo shows the 2006 team dog-piling after it won the Horizon League tournament to advance to the NCAA Tournament. This year’s squad has now repeated that feat.
“I can remember my first time at the University of Miami when we went to the College World Series,” Cooper said. “We beat Florida and and here’s a great story for you.
“They used to have a tradition at Miami where — when it was a championship game to go to the College World Series — a lot of guys would go to the souvenir stand before hand and buy the World Series shirt and put it on under their jersey. Then after the final out was made, they’d rip off their jersey and they had that shirt on.
“Well, Alex Cora was playing third base for us.” he smilingly said of the former Hurricanes star and current New York Mets infielder who is now in his 12 Major League season. “Our game was about to start and we couldn’t find Alex.
“Jim Morris, the head coach, was stressed out: ‘Where’s Alex? Where is he?’ And all of a sudden, here he comes, running in from the souvenir stand with his shirt. And Jim is yelling at him: ‘What are you doing?’
“And Alex goes, ‘Just relax, we got this thing.’ He basically was telling the head coach to ‘be quiet and sit down.’ And sure enough, we went out and won. I remember the guys taking a victory lap around the stadium and dog piling and stuff like that. The first one always is the best one, but it never gets old.”
This is Cooper’s seventh trip to the NCAA Tournament. He went as a Miami player and twice made it to the College World Series with the Hurricanes. As an assistant coach, he made the Tournament again when he was at Tulane and then at Oral Roberts.
This is the second time he’s taken the Raiders to the Tournament since he took over as head coach five seasons ago.
“There are some neat things going on athletically here,” he said of Wright State. “Whether it’s Brad Brownell winning 20 (basketball) games for the third straight year and going to the NCAA Tournament or Mike Larabee going to the tournament (softball has made the NCAA Tournament two of the past three seasons and this year won 34 games, second best in school history)…or now our success, it’s great for the university and it’s just great for the city of Dayton.”
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