waltgreenberg
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I Root For: Rice Owls
Location: Chicago
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RE: Rice Baseball Fall Ball
(11-12-2014 04:51 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote: (11-12-2014 12:28 PM)gmath Wrote: (11-11-2014 08:40 PM)waltgreenberg Wrote: For those non-RBI Club members who missed the annual baseball banquet on Sunday...
1. Several awards were handed out for the 2014 season:
- Jimmy Comerota Award for team player: Shane Hoelscher
- Chris Kolkhorst Award for playing hurt: John Clay Reeves
- RBI Club members' most popular player: JC Reeves, Blake Fox
- Coaching staff's 2014 team MVP: JC Reeves
2. As we already knew, pitching staff is absolutely loaded. Both Duplantier and McCanna (and Ditman, as well) were totally shut down this Fall; not even throwing bullpens, but all are rearing to go come January.
3. Kirby Taylor has been moved to the OF, but will be battling true Freshmen Chandler and Gray for playing time (with Warren presumed to be our CFer).
4. Infield will be: 1B Teykl, 2B Stainback, SS Byrd, 3B Juco transfer Grayson Lewis (who played with John Clay at Navarro College).
5. Danny Lehmann has been at practices working with Hunter K. on catching skills.
6. According to Coach Hallmark, we're back in the Minute Maid tourney in 2016, with OOC series that year (all at home) against Arizona, UCF and ECU. We'll be playing UT at Minute Maid and, likely, in mid-week games, and then will resume our weekend series in Austin in 2017. The Stanford series will also resume again in 2017. (Note for those seeking a 2016 trip to Palo Alto-- we play at Stanford in football in 2016.)
A fun evening enhanced by the BBQ served up by the Gatlin family.
CORRECTION: I've since been told that Chandler is now the likely starter in CF, with Warren in RF and Gray in LF. Wouldn't be surprised if Warren an Taylor serve as a righty-lefty platoon in RF.
It was a great evening, with one of the highlights being an announcement that Walt is making a major donation to the program. Thanks again for all you do for Rice baseball, Walt.
To be fair, what this was was the creation/establishment of the long discussed Rice Baseball Endowment-- the brainchild of Greg Thielmann (aka "Owlmaha", and President of the RBI Club), and the culmination of 6+ months of negotiations between Greg, myself, Dr. K, Rick Mello and The OG. As part of these negotiations, the Athletic Department also agreed to increase the annual budget for the baseball program so that it actually covers ALL basic operating expenses (including equipment, travel, et al.) I'm simply the first contributor, but we're now actively soliciting donations from others....and hope to get it up to the $3MM - $5MM level within the next several years (which would give us a $150,000 - $250,000 annual payout assuming a 5% return).
For those interested, here's some of the key wording included in the Endowment Fund Agreement (EFA):
Quote:The underlying objective behind the creation of The Fund is to perpetuate the standard of excellence in the baseball program and, toward this end, to support initiatives for increasing the competitiveness of the baseball program going forward. Consequently, the purpose of The Fund is to support expenditures over and above the basic operating budget for running the baseball program, which include, but are not limited to: player recruitment, coaching staff and
trainer salaries/bonuses, student-athlete travel, equipment, facility enhancements, and other appropriate baseball initiatives in keeping with this intention. The fund will reside in the Rice Athletics department, and the spending will be under the direction and discretion of the head baseball coach, with approval by the athletic director.
If interested in learning more about the endowment you can contact either myself or Greg at ricerbi@rice.edu.
Correction: Greg has changed his RBI Club e-mail address, and no longer uses the one posted above. If interested in learning more about the endowment, you can contact either myself or Josh Thiel, chief developement officer for athletics and point man on the Rice Baseball Endowment. His email is josh.thiel@rice.edu and his phone is 713.348.3561.
I know at least a couple of you have tried to contact Greg, and I apologize for posting a now obsolete e-mail address.
(This post was last modified: 11-20-2014 06:06 PM by waltgreenberg.)
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