OMAHA, Neb. – First-time teams at the Men’s College World Series are caught up in a tornado of activity when they land in Omaha.
There’s the excitement, the nerves, the fans, the well-wishers, the pressure of college baseball’s biggest stage, and of course, the media spotlight that becomes intensely hot once teams get to Nebraska.
But the North Carolina Tar Heels have been here before; in fact, they’re the only team to have returned to Omaha in the last three years, a fact that demonstrates both the strength of UNC’s program as well as the parity at the sport’s highest level. And having a team where at least a plurality of the players have been here before may be an advantage.
The key, according to junior infielder Gavin Gallaher, is to slow things down.
“I remember coming in here in ’24 and I don’t really remember much of it,” Gallaher said of the Tar Heels’ appearance in Omaha two years ago. “It just felt like we landed, had a couple of good practices, and before you know it we were back on the plane back home. Just trying to slow things down and hopefully be here for a couple days longer than we were last time.
Two years ago, North Carolina won its opener against Virginia 3-2 before losing to eventual national champion Tennessee 6-1 and then dropping an elimination game to Florida State 9-5.
“I think just coming here with a mission. Not getting caught up in everything that’s going on,” said Jason Decaro, a junior right hander who threw a complete game shutout in Game 2 of the Chapel Hill Super Regional to even the best-of-three. “Because it’s easy to do that. There’s a lot of extra stuff that you can do. And a lot of that can be distractions. Just staying focused on why we’re here and just keeping the main thing the main thing.”
And while experience matters, sometimes, head coach Scott Forbes said, it doesn’t, citing his first season as the Tar Heels’ pitching coach.
“My first year here in 2006, we hadn’t been in how long, I think ’89? Next thing you know we win three games in a row and we’re playing Oregon State in the finals,” he said with a mild shrug.
Forbes, now in his sixth season at the helm, has brought the Tar Heels here twice, but he concedes that Gallaher is somewhat right.
“I don’t really remember that much as well. I learned a lot from ’24,” Forbes said. “If you want to come out here and you want to have success, my job as head coach is to remind these guys why we’re here. While it’s an honor to be here and it’s hard to get to the College World Series, it’s even harder to win it, and you don’t want to look back and say would have, could have, should have, we didn’t do this, we didn’t do that.”
To do that, Forbes has had his team watch documentaries about Super Bowl-winning teams, including several who lost the first time they reached the big game, only to win when they returned.
“We’re out here on a business trip,” Forbes said he explained to the team. “When you’re going on that business trip and you play well, you get to be on that business trip longer. So that’s our overall goal, for sure.”
