Travel glitches highlight Mazey’s mission for Mountaineer memories

West Virginia baseball manager Randy Mazey was in a Super Regional six other times as a head coach and an assistant before bringing the Mountaineers to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for the first Super Regional in program history.

He’s familiar with the stage and the stakes. He even knows about Boshamer Stadium, where WVU and North Carolina open a best-of-three series at 6 p.m. today on ESPN2, where Mazey competed as a player, assistant and head coach before this weekend. Experience at the head of the bench should come in handy with so many new things washing over his players.

“It’s been different for me than it has been for the players,” he said. “They charter everywhere they go now. I have to ride buses.”

OK, that’s a curveball. But it’s the truth. As part of his mission to ensure his players get the most out of this postseason, Mazey has put the team ahead of himself amid travel complications. As part of the NCAA’s postseason offerings, WVU had a 30-seat charter for the flight to North Carolina. WVU also had more than 30 people to transport. There are 29 players alone making the trip.

“I rode the bus,” Mazey said. “I refused to pull players off that charter.”

The Mountaineers, who ordinarily take buses when possible and commercial flights when required, had another predicament for the first stage of the postseason and the Tucson Regional. Travel plans on the way there fell apart during a stop in Dallas when connecting commercial flights were canceled due to weather. The NCAA helped WVU line up two charter flights, and the team made it to Arizona a few hours behind schedule.

“We had to take two different planes to Tucson,” Mazey said. “We had to chop the team in half to get out there. But when we have problems like that — travel problems, logistical problems — it just benefits us because that’s how this program was built. Overcoming stuff like that. When that happens, we always say, ‘Advantage: Mountaineers.'”

WVU swept the regional and made history by moving on to its first Super Regional, but the celebration was slightly muted. A team that wanted to be together was separated again. 

“On the way home, all we could get was a 30-seater,” Mazey said. “We put all the players on it with one responsible adult. On the way down here, we could only get a 30-seater, so we did the same thing.”

Mazey, one of many who took commercial flights back from Arizona and consequently missed the celebration with fans when the team arrived at the stadium, is retiring after the season. He’s been sentimental and even emotional during the tail end of the journey, and what seems to mean the most is knowing his players get to experience this. Removing himself from the travel plans is part of that.

“The reason I wanted to win a regional, the reason I’d love to win a Super Regional is for them to experience things they’ve never experienced before,” he said. “Our jobs as coaches and even as parents is to try to create memories for those guys. That’s kind of what we’re doing.”