For Mitch Gaspard, Alabama Baseball at the Ruston Regional is a Family Reunion
This weekend in the small northern Louisiana town of Ruston, an Alabama baseball family reunion is set to occur.
On Monday, Louisiana Tech assistant coach Mitch Gaspard joined his team to watch the NCAA Baseball Selection Show. This season, his Bulldogs compiled a 40-18 record and finished the season as runner-up in the Conference USA Tournament. To Gaspard and his players, it had been quite a successful season, but there was still work to be done.
LA Tech had already been selected to host an NCAA Regional, but their opponents had yet to be announced.
“We honestly thought LSU would probably come here and maybe another Louisiana team,” Gaspard said. “McNeese or Southern would come as the No. 4.
“There were no projections that ever had Alabama coming to Ruston.”
As the teams were announced in LA Tech’s regional, the first team revealed was No. 4-seed Rider. The team next, though, caught Gaspard, his entire team and much of the college baseball world by surprise.
“Half the team looked at me as soon as the ‘Alabama’ popped up on the board,” Gaspard chuckled.
Gaspard served as an assistant coach of Alabama baseball from 1995-2001, then again in 2008-2009 before becoming its head coach from 2010-2016. Under Gaspard, the Crimson Tide experienced its last regional appearance in 2014. In a sense, it seems poetic that the program’s first regional since Gaspard’s days would find them traveling to Ruston for that reunion.
Gaspard resigned from Alabama in May of 2016 due to personal reasons. Chiefly among those was his devotion to his family. In a letter penned to the Crimson Tide fanbase, Gaspard cited his wife, Kim, and daughters, Brae and Paeton, among the reasons that he had decided to resign.
After one season for the Crimson Tide with coach Greg Goff — who, ironically, was the head coach at Louisiana Tech before making the move to Tuscaloosa — Brad Bohannon stepped onto the scene in Tuscaloosa. Upon taking the job, one of his first phone calls as new head coach was to Gaspard in order to seek his guidance.
“He was very, very helpful to me when I got the Alabama job of navigating some things internally that you just don’t know until you coach somewhere so really thankful for Mitch’s friendship and the way that he has supported us remotely,” Bohannon said. “I can’t say enough good things about Mitch.”
At that time, Gaspard had become an associate head coach at Kansas State, but in 2019 had moved on to become an assistant at Georgia. While he had already helped Bohannon settle down in Tuscaloosa, it was during his time in Athens that Gaspard experienced his first reunion with his former team.
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Bohannon being aware of Gaspard’s connection with the team, he allowed Gaspard to come and speak to his players.
“When I was at Georgia a couple of years ago a lot of that group — my last group — was still there with Sam Finnerty and many of those guys,” Gaspard said. “That was tough for me, quite honestly.”
It was in April of 2019, Gaspard’s coaching location would change once again. However, this time it would be because of his unique experience back in Tuscaloosa.
As head coach of Alabama, Gaspard had been in charge of the program during the April 2011 tornado that devastated the city of Tuscaloosa. While no players or coaches were harmed during the destruction, it was still a unique challenge that presented itself to Gaspard.
In April of 2019, a very similar event happened in Ruston as an EF-3 tornado swept through the small town, destroying much of LA Tech’s athletic facilities — including irreversible damage to the school’s baseball stadium.
At 7:30 in the morning after the storm, LA Tech head coach Lane Burroughs reached out to Gaspard, who he thought could help in the situation due to his experience during the April 2011 storm.
“It’s obviously one of those things that there’s really no words at the time of what you can do but obviously a little bit of experience helps just to try to help pull things back together,” Gaspard said. “Fortunately for the team — like ours — there was some vehicle damage and some home damage but personally everybody was fine from a health standpoint. You just try to pick up the pieces and so there was two things in me coming here.”
Burroughs asked Gaspard to join the team’s staff as an assistant to help guide the team during the rebuilding process. Gaspard jumped at the opportunity, as not only did it mean a chance for him to rebuild a program in need but also gave him the chance to move closer to his family.
“We were getting closer to our daughters and obviously our parents as well, being from southeast Texas,” Gaspard said. “It was just a really good move and Ruston and Louisiana was an area that my wife and I really wanted to get back to. The tornado and all those things kind of rounded out in different ways but I think I was at least able to help in some ways for Lane and the team and glad whatever way that was I was glad to lend a helping hand through the experiences that we went through there at the University of Alabama.”
Two years and a new ballpark later, Gaspard is still in Ruston helping out in any way that he can.
This weekend, though, a family reunion will happen once again as the Crimson Tide rolls onto LA Tech’s campus for the Ruston Regional.
The morning of the regional announcement, Gaspard had already texted Bohannon to wish him good luck. With the Crimson Tide being on the bubble, there were no guarantees that the team would make a regional. For Gaspard’s Bulldogs, the regional host was guaranteed a spot. However, their opponents had yet to be set in stone.
And now we come full circle, back to the moment that the word ‘Alabama’ popped onto the video board for Gaspard and his team.
“I had texted Bo the morning of the selection and wished him good luck and then obviously when they get in, we’re going ‘Oh crap, they’re coming here,’” Gaspard laughed. “So we kinda went back and forth.”
On Thursday, Bohannon once again allowed Gaspard to visit with his team during its practice at LA Tech’s new stadium, J.C. Love Field at Pat Patterson Park. While all of the Crimson Tide players that played on the field for Gaspard have since graduated, two players that were commits during his time — catcher Sam Praytor and outfielder T.J. Reeves — are still on the team. Combine them with student assistant coaches Kyle Cameron and Chandler Avant, and that makes four current and former players associated with Gaspard.
While Gaspard still has quite the few connections with Alabama, Bohannon knows that he will focus on nothing but competition following first pitch should the Crimson Tide and the Bulldogs square off this weekend.
“For we coaches, once the game starts it’s all about the kids in our dugout, the uniforms that we’re wearing and I don’t want to speak for him but I can’t imagine once the games start — even if we’re playing — that there’ll be anything awkward or abnormal for anyone,” Bohannon said. “A lot of us coaches are friends. A lot of people don’t realize that we spend a lot of time together in the offseason recruiting or going out to eat after watching baseball for 12 hours or those types of things.
“It was really nice to see him. He’s a good man.”
While Gaspard now has five years separating him from his 15 combined years at Alabama as an assistant and head coach. Now closer to his family and removed from the stresses that come with the job as a head coach in the SEC, Gaspard is happy that he’s in Ruston.
That being said, Tuscaloosa will always be a special place to him and his family.
“My wife and I, our daughters are graduates of the University of Alabama,” Gaspard said. “It’s always going to have a special place in our heart and to spend that many years there — just always going to be really grateful. It’s always a score that I check nightly to see how Alabama’s doing.”
