NSU looking to make Southland tourney for 1st time under Durham

Walk into the Nicholls baseball clubhouse and you’ll find a united roster – a self-described band of brothers fighting to make it to the Southland Conference Tournament.

You’ll find a group of players that are quick to joke around, but even quicker to pick up a struggling teammate.

But it wasn’t always that way.

That’s because the team is made up of several local players who prior to their time at Nicholls competed against one another for dominance on the high school fields of the Tri-parish area. That competition led to rivalries, which sometimes led to the local standouts not exactly being best friends.

“I can remember a time when we were all lining up to play against one another in high school, you know, we probably didn’t like one another much back then,” said junior infielder Tristan Rogers. “But that was good because we learned to be competitive. But once we all got here and came together, we just kind of gelled. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Sophomore first baseman Blake Bergeron said he remembers a time when he was in high school that he’d read the newspaper to see what the other local players were doing, so he could keep up with them.

“It’s even still like that now,” he said. “We always are competing with one another and are pushing each other to do the best we can. It helps our team a lot.”

In total, nine players from the Tri-parish area are on the Colonels’ roster, including regular starters, Rogers, an Ellender graduate and Bergeron, who went to Terrebonne.

The Colonels also have several contributing pitchers from the area, including weekend starter Clint Dempster from Thibodaux High School and Ellender’s Cullen Babin, who pitches out of the bullpen.

Colonels’ coach Chip Durham said getting the best local players to consider Nicholls is something his staff has made a point of emphasis in his time with the team.

“We’ve got some of the better local players in the area in our program,” Durham said. “And that’s what we want to do first. We want to start locally and recruit the best local players that we can get in there, and then from there, work our way out.”

The coach also added it’s a testament to the high school and youth programs in the area that so many players are able to play at the college level.

“That’s a big part of it,” the coach said. “We’re just glad we’re able to get these kids to buy into our program and come play with us, because in the beginning, we had plenty of local kids that we recruited who went elsewhere.”

Dempster, who landed at Nicholls following a stint in junior college, said he missed the proximity to home Thibodaux provides. He also said seeing familiar faces in the crowd each game is something he believes fuels both he and his teammates.

“It’s hard to explain how much it means to play in front of family,” Dempster said. “We all know one another’s families from high school and all of that. It gives us a lot more confidence and when we go home, we have a lot of people to talk to who can help us out.”

So far, the local flair has yielded a large dividend to the Colonels’ program.

With just four weekends to go in the season, the team is in 8th place in the Southland Conference with a 10-11 record.

The top eight teams advance to the Southland Conference Tournament at the end of the season, and the Colonels have not made the conference tournament since 2000 – five years before Durham’s first season with the program.

“This club controls its own destiny,” Durham said. “It’s all about what they want to do. It’s not about how bad the coaches want it or how bad the fans want it, it’s got to be about how bad the players want it. We’ve got a chance to do something Nicholls hasn’t done in a long time. We’ve got a little over a month of baseball, and it’s time to get after it.”

Rogers agreed with his coach and said he believes the team will mesh in the final 30 days of the season because of the camaraderie the team has.

“We just need to keep meshing and playing good baseball,” he said. “And I definitely see that happening right now. We’re definitely headed on the right track.”

Nicholls freshman pitcher Cullen Babin winds up and delivers a pitch during a game earlier this season. Babin is one of several local players making an impact for the Colonels this season. * Photo by CASEY GISCLAIR