University of North Carolina Athletics
GoHeels Exclusive: Omaha 2018
June 16, 2018 | Baseball
By Pat James, GoHeels.com
OMAHA, Neb. — Early Thursday afternoon, as the North Carolina team bus headed west down Dodge Street, the main east-west street here in Omaha, and toward Creighton for practice, Mike Fox turned to Scott Forbes.
The bus had just passed a hotel on the right side of the road. And after Fox confirmed with Forbes that the Tar Heels had once stayed there, they started listing each hotel they've stayed at on their past trips here, naming each one almost chronologically.
This week, they've added another to that already-lengthy list.
Although no players on the roster reached the College World Series before this season, UNC boasts a coaching staff with plenty of Omaha experience. Fox and Forbes lead the way, with this being their seventh appearance. Jesse Wierzbicki and Robert Woodard are making their second and fourth trips, respectively.
"We've done about everything except win the national championship out here, which is hard to do," Forbes said. "We've been out here for an extended period of time, so we know the place, we know downtown, we know the outskirts, we know the best restaurants. That's the exciting part."
Despite this familiarity, each trip here isn't the same. And the journey to this College World Series might be the most unique for the coaching staff as a whole.
In 2013, Carolina appeared in its sixth College World Series in eight seasons. The Tar Heels also set a program record for wins (59). But even with the departures of key players such as Kent Emanuel, Brian Holberton and Colin Moran, no one could have predicted what came next.
UNC's 2014 season ended in the Gainesville Regional. Then, in 2015 and 2016, Carolina missed the NCAA Tournament in consecutive seasons for the first time since 1996 and 1997. It also didn't qualify for the ACC Tournament in 2016.
That stretch, Fox said, forced the coaches to evaluate themselves and the program.
"We did exactly what we ask our players to do," Fox said. "We looked ourselves in the mirror first and said, 'OK, what do we need to do? What do we need to change?' I had to look at myself first from a responsibility standpoint of, 'Are we getting too complacent? Do we need to make some changes?'"
That's not all he saw.
"I'm probably my harshest critic in terms of how I'm acting and behaving and approaching every day," he said. "You don't have to think about that as much when you're younger and you're coaching. But you really have to think about it as you get older. The kids stay the same. So am I in their world? … I also know sometimes you've got to loosen up a little bit. They are kids, they are just playing a game.
"So that's probably what I saw, because I want to win. I want to win, I want to win at the highest level. And when you go from the World Series to not making the ACC Tournament, then that's on me. It's not on them, it's on me. I get it."
Fox said he reassessed the coaching staff, the program's culture and even practices, among other things. Yet some of the most significant changes came on the recruiting trail.
The Tar Heels' 2014 recruiting class was regarded by some as the best in the country. But six members of that class were selected in the first two rounds of the MLB Draft and opted to sign professional contracts. Although that couldn't have been foreseen, Forbes said the coaching staff learned from that experience.
"You can't just have a bunch of first- and second-round draft picks in your class," Forbes said. "Personally, for my self-evaluation, it was like, 'OK, don't take for granted how good you are at the current time. Constantly keep an eye on the next team.'"
Around that same time, more high school players were starting to commit at a younger age.
It's easy, Forbes said, to offer talented high school players a scholarship, even if they've only visited campus one time. But UNC strayed from that trend. If a high school player wished to commit to Carolina and the coaching staff barely knew him and his family, the coaches ensured they learned more about them or they moved on to another player.
"We really stepped back and tried to treat it like we're interviewing somebody for a job," Forbes said. "It was like, 'I'm going to plan 3-4 hours on the golf cart around this family and the kid and try to figure out if this is our type of kid. I know he's good enough. But is he our type of kid?' And there have been some kids who we felt like, after being around them that long, they just weren't going to fit the culture we were looking for.
"Every kid wants to play, but we wanted good, high-character kids who cared about winning, who weren't on their cell phones the whole time on (the visit), just little things like that. We wanted those kids who were thankful and viewed it as an honor to be offered by UNC."
Many of the key players on the teams that went to Omaha between 2006 and 2013 embodied those traits. And they demonstrated the sort of accountability Fox looks for.
Wierzbicki and Woodard were two examples of that.
As a senior in 2011, Wierzbicki helped lead the Tar Heels back to the College World Series after the 2010 team, which featured a few players who he said concentrated more on themselves than the team, exited the NCAA Tournament during regional play. Woodard was a volunteer assistant coach in 2011. He also played an influential role on the 2006 and 2007 teams that made reaching Omaha the expectation.
So when Wierzbicki and Woodard returned to Chapel Hill as assistant coaches before last season, they hoped to reemphasize the principles that Fox and Forbes have always preached. Woodard said he learned a lot about the 2017 team's makeup early on.
"I remember getting to know Logan Warmoth, J.B. Bukauskas, Brian Miller, Tyler Lynn and Adam Pate, those five guys who aren't on this year's team but were on last year's team," Woodard said, "and (getting back to Omaha) is all they talked about. It was like the first week I was here. I was like, 'OK, sweet. This is the expectation. These guys want it.'
"You have to have (that mindset) throughout your program. It definitely starts at the top, but you have to have it spreading throughout your guys."
Carolina didn't return to Omaha last season. But after winning a program-best 23 ACC games and all 10 league series, the Tar Heels returned to form.
Although Woodard said the coaching staff's approach to managing certain aspects of the program has changed some since he was a player, the foundation remains the same. That's helped create "a fun environment" where players can learn from their failures. And it's allowed the team to become more cohesive.
Because of all this, UNC finds itself in Omaha again, preparing to face Oregon State in the College World Series opener on Saturday. It will be the first College World Series game that Wierzbicki coaches in.
"As a player, you're just trying to get prepared to play, and you don't really care who the opponent is," Wierzbicki said. "You're going to show up every day at the ballpark kind of the same way in terms of you're ready to play, you've done everything you needed to do to prepare and you feel confident going into the game. And as a coach, there's a lot of other factors and there's a lot of other things that you're trying to prepare for.
"So it's definitely different. It's a lot of fun. And I enjoyed this week preparing for this moment."
When Woodard committed to Carolina, he thumb-tacked an index card to a bulletin board in his dorm room. That card featured only one word: "Omaha." It was somewhere he longed to go, and the index card served as a constant reminder.
Woodard started making goal-oriented index cards similar to that one in high school. And he's continued that practice as a coach, sometimes through different methods.
Last July, just a month after the Tar Heels' season ended in the Chapel Hill Regional, Woodard was customizing a pair of shoes on NikeElite.com. He intended to order the shoes as a recruiting tool. But he then saw how words could be inscribed on the inside tongue of both shoes.
So he added two different silver-stitched words on each, knowing he'd see them almost every day. From left to right, they read "Omaha 2018."
"It was something that was small," Woodard said. "But I definitely believe in setting goals, and we talk to our guys about setting goals and setting them high. If you put them in places that you can see all the time and be reminded of, it kind of keeps the vision a little bit clearer."
