Webster returns after 2-year layoff, firing on all cylinders for Colonels

Nicholls State junior pitcher Seth Webster places his foot on the rubber and officially starts going through the process again.

He stares deep into the glove of his catcher who doesn’t hesitate to put down his index finger.

Fastball, nothing fancy, nothing tricky. Just good ole fashioned heat.

Webster complies with his catcher’s request, nodding his head in agreement as he further readies himself to pitch.

He puts his hand on the baseball, readying his four-seam grip, his hands are “soaked and wet.”

“I was a nervous wreck. I was,” Webster later says. “I tried not to show it, but I was definitely fighting nerves.”

“It was tough to keep him under control,” Colonels coach Seth Thibodeaux added. “It was almost like he was a freshman again. There was that excitement there. He was pitching close to home again. There had just been a lot of stuff that he had gone through.”

Webster overcomes his anxiety and finally fires that first pitch, a strike over the outside corner of the plate. The next pitch is a hanger that is ripped into a gap for a leadoff single.

“I was rusty,” he laughed. “That first guy got me a little bit.”

One batter later, Webster strikes out Grambling State hitter Brian Knuckles.

Suddenly it is all coming back to him again.

After a two-year bout with a litany of arm and shoulder injuries, Webster is officially back home.

“It’d been a long road – just a really long road for me,” Webster said. “That was like the culmination of it all, being able to get back out there pitching again.”

Webster did just about everything an athlete can do during his time at Buckeye High School, which is just outside of his native town of Deville, La.

The standout prospect won First Team All-District honors twice and was also named to the First-Team All-State team in 2006.

Oh yeah, he was named to the prestigious Who’s Who Among High School Students list and was also on the Wendy’s High School Heisman List.

“I loved it there,” Webster said. “A lot of great things happened for me.”

From that dominant high school career, Webster committed to then Colonels coach Chip Durham, where he was immediately called upon to be the team’s Friday night starter in his true freshman season.

But the summer before he got to Nicholls, Webster started to notice something a little abnormal when he completed his delivery.

He felt a slight pain in his right arm.

It didn’t alter his ability to effectively get people out, so Webster thought nothing of it and continued to pitch.

“With Seth, he’s always had a little pain in the back of his arm,” Thibodeaux said. “We’d always had the fear in the back of our minds that maybe this was something that happened in high school that was really starting to just get really aggravated.”

Pitching through the slight discomfort, Webster was well enough to complete the season with a 5.82 ERA in 51 total innings in 2008.

From that modest start, Webster headed into the offseason rejuvenated and looked forward to breaking out in 2009.

“I was building on a pretty strong freshman year at that time,” Webster said. “I really headed into that offseason strong thinking I would have a pretty nice sophomore season. I had no idea what was about to happen.”

The 2009 season started off with the bang Webster hoped, as he won his opening start, tossing six solid innings against Chicago State, allowing just two earned runs.

From that solid start, Nicholls readied for their second weekend series of the season, a road tilt against Mississippi State.

To prepare for that outing, Webster tossed a bullpen session to stay sharp.

When he did, the small bark of pain showed suddenly that it had a huge bite.

“I pitched my bullpen three days prior to the game to get ready for my start,” Webster said. “And what ended up happening was after bullpen, I just couldn’t really feel my arm. That’s the only way I could explain it. My arm was just done.”

An initial MRI revealed that Webster had a tear in his labrum and his bicep.

Doctors estimated that injury would cost him four-to-six weeks, which meant that he’d be ready for the team’s conference slate.

“I saw Dr. James Andrews in Alabama and he put me on like a six-week program,” Webster said. “He said, ‘Take it easy and do all of these exercises, but this is an injury that can heal itself.'”

That ended up not being the case.

As four weeks became six weeks and six weeks extended to eight, Webster still felt the same thing when he tried to toss around a baseball – numbness and pain.

“Still nothing,” Webster said. “That was sort of the story of my life there for those first few weeks. It was very frustrating.”

As time continued to drag along without relief, Webster met with his coaches and family and decided that letting the tear heal on its own wasn’t the best option, he was going to undergo surgery in May of 2009, which would officially end his sophomore season.

“It was tough,” Webster said. “That’s really the best word to describe having to make that decision. But you just had to take it in stride. I had to just trust in knowing that the doctors know what’s best for you. But it was tough.”

But every cloud has a silver lining. For Webster, surgery created a “more certain” timeline for recovery.

Doctors predicted Webster would be able to soft-throw a baseball again in four months and return to full-time action in six-to-nine months, which meant he’d tentatively be ready for the Colonels’ 2010 season.

October 2009 rolled around and Webster did his soft tosses and was on schedule to continue his rehab.

But when he got back on the mound and tried to pitch full strength, it just wasn’t happening yet.

“I got to six months and it felt the same. I got to nine months and it felt the same,” Webster said. “You know, the closer I got to nine months, the more I started to hear, ‘You know, it’s really more of a 9-12 month injury. Then when I got to 12, they’d tell me, ‘You know, it’s more of a 12-15 month injury.’ Everytime I’d throw, I’d have that same pain in my shoulder and they’d keep pushing the timetable back. I’m sure they did that just to keep me going.”

With Webster’s discomfort dragging into the beginning of 2010, the Colonels started another season without their hurler. It ended up being the best season the team had in more than a decade, and Webster could only watch from the dugout.

The right-handed pitcher said that he has nothing but admiration for the way Nicholls played in 2010.

But Thibodeaux and teammates noticed that it wasn’t easy for Webster to sit back and watch, knowing he couldn’t make an impact.

“I saw the pain in his eyes and the hurt in him,” Thibodeaux said. “Because he wanted so bad to be a part of one of the best seasons here in the last 10 years and he wasn’t able to do so.”

Like Webster, outfielder Scott Moseley battled injuries that year, as well. He said Webster would often confide his frustrations with him during their rehabilitation process.

“We’d sit down on the side,” Moseley said. “And having to watch them was a tough deal. But I sort of always knew he’d bounce back and be back.”

Webster admits that there were times in the middle of the 2010 season when he thought he wouldn’t ever return to action.

“If I told you I didn’t have those thoughts I’d be lying to you,” Webster said. “It’s something that definitely crossed my mind. I flirted with the idea in my head, never publicly, but I flirted with the idea of giving up. You think, ‘Seth, you can’t throw. What are you going to do? Play another position?'”

But as the pitcher made the decision to stick with the game for a few more months, something magic happened, the pain he once felt gradually began to ease.

One bullpen session at a time.

There was gradually less and less pain.

“It really wasn’t one time where I threw and could say, ‘I’m back,'” Webster said. “It was just gradual. It just gradually came back to where every time I’d throw, the pain would get less and less.”

Webster approached about “75-to-80 percent” status toward the back-end of the Colonels’ 2010 season, which was about 12 months after his surgery.

Thibodeaux said the pitcher lobbied to see action in the back half of the season, but the coaching staff nixed that notion.

“We could have brought him back last year,” Thibodeaux said. “But he wasn’t ready. Maybe mentally he wanted to get out there, but knowing the pain was still in there a little bit, he just still wasn’t there. To use a year of eligibility to throw five or 10 innings of relief, it just wasn’t fair to him or what he’s trying to do.”

With Webster now out for the remainder of 2010, the pitcher officially turned his focus to this year, the 2011 season.

The pitcher threw all throughout fall practices without a setback and reported little to no pain now close to 18 months removed from his surgery.

From fall quickly came spring and it was finally Webster’s turn to pitch in game action again.

Seeing his pitcher in the offseason reinforced to Thibodeaux that Webster was ready to be a rock for the Colonels in 2011.

“I saw what he did last summer,” Thibodeaux said. “And I saw when he came back early in August to keep working and to show guys that he was here and he was the real deal and he was here to stay. I knew as soon as I saw him that he was back and better than ever.”

Then the season came around and that first start, a road game against Grambling.

At approximately 2:13 p.m. on Feb. 18, 2011, Webster took the ball and threw his first pitch. Close to 22 months removed from a surgery that was designed to heal a diagnosed ‘four-to-six week injury,’ Webster was back.

“I can’t explain to you how I felt on that day,” Webster said. “Mostly because I can’t say definitively that I thought it’d ever come.”

Just pitching is one thing – pitching well is entirely another.

Webster has been better than “well”. He’s been great.

The Colonels junior has accumulated 57 innings on the season for Nicholls, back in his post as the team’s Friday night starter.

His 2.84 ERA is among the best of all Southland Conference pitchers.

“I didn’t necessarily think it would all come back to me this quick,” Webster said. “It just sort of came back. I never doubted that when healthy that I could pitch, but I didn’t have any idea that I’d be effective this quick.”

And with a full year left of eligibility in Thibodaux, Webster’s coach believes the best is yet to come.

Maybe the best things in life are worth waiting for.

“The sky’s the limit for Seth,” Thibodeaux said. “He’s a hard worker. He does everything right. He’s not a hard thrower. He just throws 84-87 [mph]. Or maybe even 83-86 [mph], but he studies hard, spots his pitches well and he can put the baseball on the corner and strike you out with his fastball. That’s exactly what Greg Maddox used to do. We couldn’t be happier for Seth and what he’s done to get back to this level. No one deserves this more than Seth Webster.”

Nicholls junior pitcher Seth Webster tosses a baseball in the air at the Nicholls Baseball Complex. Sitting and watching is something Webster became all too used to as he missed close to two years with an injury. But Webster is back now and has emerged as one of the Southland Conference’s best pitchers. CASEY GISCLAIR