Sports
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Can Kansas overcome its slump?
The baseball team faces a must-win game Friday to enter postseason play. GAMEDAY | 8B
Spring sp not over yet
THURSDAY,MAY6,2010
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THE PRICES ARE RIGHT
Weston White/KANSAN FILE PHOTO
Coach Ritch Price Lits a ball during infield practice before an earlier game against Missouri this season. Price, who is in his seventh season at Kansas, will be coaching his son Robby for the last time this season.
Mike Gunnoe/KANSAN
Senior second baseman Robbie Price field a ground ball Sunday at Hogun Ballpark. Kansas lost to Tech Texas, falling to 16-1-1 overall and 6-8 in the Big 12.
Prices' playing streak ends
The boys have been starters since their dad became coach at Kansas
Saying Robby Price had big shoes to fill or a shadow to step out from under just doesn't cut it. After all, there were three pairs of shoes and three towering shadows waiting when Robby, the Jayhawks' senior second baseman, set foot on campus four years ago.
BY TIM DWYER
tdwyer@kansan.com
This is all because Robby is the youngest member of what can accurately be called the first family of Kansas baseball.
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His father Ritch has established himself as one of the most successful coaches in Jayhawk history. He's the second winningest coach in Kansas baseball history, and among coaches with at least 100 games coached at Kansas, Price has the highest winning percentage at .556.
Eldest brother Ritchie was part of his father's first recruiting class. He was a defensive wizard at shortstop in his four years at Kansas before being selected in the 18th round of the 2006 Major League Baseball draft. Now he's the youngest head coach in Division I at South Dakota State.
Middle brother Ryne hit more home runs as a Jayhawk than any other player to ever don the crimson and blue before his graduation in 2008 and selection in the 33rd round of the draft.
Both of Robby's brothers were starters on the 2006 Big 12 Champions team that their father coached — the only Big 12 title the lavhawks have ever won.
The story of the Prices' relationship with the Jayhawks starts in 2002 when, following an eight-year run as the head coach of Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, Calif., Ritch Price accepted an offer to become the head coach at Kansas.
That same year, Ritch's eldest son was graduating high school and had originally committed to play baseball at the University of Arizona. When the Wildcats
Still, Robby has had at least as successful a career as either of his brothers.
"When I came here and my sons elected to play for me, the single most important part of this process was that all three players were good enough to not create any controversy about being the coach's son," Ritch said.
hired a new head coach, Ritchie followed his father to Kansas, where he started in the middle infield from day one.
"When he got the job, I wasn't planning on coming to Kansas," Ritchie said. "I'd never even been to Kansas. Then right before the school year started, I just got in my car and drove to Lawrence. After we saw how great a school it was and how great a town it was, I think we all knew wed be going there."
To ensure that it was the right decision to have his son play for him despite the potential for controversy, Ritch called some of his
closest friends in the industry — some who had their sons play for them and some who sent them else-where.
"It all came back to every single coach whose son played for them told me it was the great-
back from surgery to repair a torn labrum, a muscle in the shoulder, and perform to a level he always was capable of.
From a coach's standpoint, Ritch is glad that Robby, his steady-glove second baseman, has found his hitting stroke in his senior year. As a father, Ritch is ecstatic to see his son come
"When you're their coach, you don't get to be a parent," Ritch said. "You don't get to talk about how down they are when they're not playing well and how great it feels when they're going good because all you focused on is your tea and 35 guys, where a no
"After we saw how great a school it was ... I think we all knew we'd be going there."
est time of their career," he said.
RITCHIE PRICE Eldest son
mal parent just gets to talk to their son when they're going through the peaks and valleys of a season"
When Dad has to coach, though, the matron of the Price clan, Cindy, is available to be a mother. Robby said that his mom had come to follow base-
of her family's involvement with the game.
"I think she kind of has to be a fan. She thinks she knows a lot," Robby said with a laugh.
Ritchie, the oldest son, said whenever he talks to his brothers
Check out other families with rich histories in Kansas sports at kansan.com/ photos/galleries.
KANSAN.com
- once every couple weeks - or
his dad, about two times a week
his dad — about five times a week — the conversation immediately shifts to baseball.
"Most of our conversations," Ritchie said, "center around baseball and that program. Our family as a whole has given so much and invested so much in the baseball program there."
Naturally, Ritch and his sons didn't want to have a relationship that was solely coach-player, so on the advice of a friend who also coached his son, Ritch established a Monday night dinner with his boys where they could talk about anything — except baseball.
"For the eight years that I've been here, I've taken each one of my sons to dinner on Monday night, and we'll go to some restaurant downtown, and I just get to be a dad," he said. "I get to
SEE PRICE ON PAGE 3B
SOFTBALL
Team splits last nonconference doubleheader
BY ZACH GETZ
zgetz@kansan.com
twitter/.zgetz
In its final nonconference series of the year, Kansas split a doubleheader against the Drake Bulldogs on the road. Kansas moved to 20-31 (1-15) while Drake went to 31-19. Kansas will finish the season with a 19-16 record against nonconference opponents, but never found its stride in Big 12 Conference play.
Kansas pitched exceptionally well in Game One, and freshman pitcher Alex Jones pitched seven full innings, allowing just one hit and one earned-run.
Coach Megan Smith said she was very pleased with Jones' performance in the pitching circle.
SERIES RECAP
"It was one of those games that I got in the groove early, which was nice," Jones said. "Pitchers also love going to the mound knowing they are already ahead."
Game one:
Kansas 2, Drake 1
Game two:
Drake 6, Kansas 0
The first game was a very sloppy game for both teams, with six errors between the two. In the first inning alone, both teams combined for five errors.
"She did a really good job controlling and jamming the hitters," Smith said.
In the top of the first, Drake's three errors helped Kansas score the first run.
Drake tied the game in the second, but Kansas quickly took the lead back in the third. Neither
team would score again, and Kansas would walk away with a narrow 2-1 victory.
In Game Two, Drake's pitching took over as Kansas only managed to rack up two hits and no runs in the game.
The passion from senior infielder Sara Ramirez is contagious.
"It was frustrating because we couldn't get any momentum going," freshman outfielder Maggie Hull said. "No one came to play at the plate."
THE 'HEART AND SOUL' OF THE TEAM
Game Two was also a sloppy game for Kansas, as this time Kansas alone would rack up five
PAGE 7B
UP NEXT
Iowa State vs. Kansas
WHEN: 2 p.m. Saturday
and noon Sunday
WHERE: Arrocha
Ballpark, Lawrence
errors in the game.
"We thought we had gotten to a point in a season where we had cleaned up all those errors." Hull said. "It was frustrating to see them come back out again."
The game was scoreless until the bottom of the fifth, when two errors and two hits helped Drake score four runs to take a 4-0 lead. Drake would add two more runs in the sixth, and Kansas wasn't able to answer as the Bulldogs shut out the Javahaws 6-0.
Kansas will conclude the regu
Edited by Allyson Shaw
Kansas has still yet to win a conference game at home, but it will have its best chance against the ninth place Cyclones. Kansas' five seniors will be honored during Senior Day on Saturday.
lar season this weekend against Iowa State 25-27 (3-13) in a twogame series at Arrocha Ballpark, Iowa State comes in with a sixgame losing streak while Kansas has lost eight in a row in Big 12 play.
COMMENTARY
Sports' focus is on future, not the past
BY ALEX BEECHER abeecher@kansan.com
As the year comes to a close, it's tempting to cast long eyes on the past, already putting together mental scrapbooks. College, we're so often told, is about the memories.
But sports are different. Sports are not about the memories, no matter how great some might be. Sports are about the pursuit of "next year."
A story that illustrates that point beautifully goes like this: In the midst of celebrating the 2008 national championship, coach Bill Self spotted assistant coach Joe Dooley sitting off by himself. Dooley didn't appear to share in the revelry. Instead, he looked zoned out, focused on anything but the glory the other coaches basked in. Self approached Dooley and asked him, "I'm not this awesome?"
You would expect Dooley's answer to confirm that, yes, this was awesome. Perhaps he appeared zoned out only because he could scarcely believe what had happened. Maybe Mario Miracle didn't seem real quite yet.
But that's not what Dooley said. Instead, he replied, "We've got to figure out a way to do it again." Fifteen minutes after one of the most riveting final acts in NCAA tournament history, and Joe Dooley had moved on. He was already thinking about next year.
Dooley is an extreme example, no doubt. Few people are wired in such a way that turning life's pages comes so easily. But Dooley's attitude is helpful in understanding the transient nature of sports.
Kansas football's hot start? Ancient history. So, too, is the collapse that followed. It's filed away next to images of a star-crossed basketball season and even more recent events like the Kansas Relays.
It doesn't matter whether the mem ory is good, bad or indifferent. The point is that nothing that's already transpired can be as interesting as events yet to unfold.
Not even Todd Reesing's most daring escape can compete with Kansas' current quarterback competition in that regard. Whether Kale Pick locks himself in as the starter or is unseated by someone else, the endless supply of possibilities provides an equally endless supply of speculation and interest
Pick might be great. He might be terrible. He might not even play. But right now, all that matters is that all of those things could happen.
The fact that Kansas' would be all-time great basketball team fell in the second round to Northern Iowa, tragic as it may have seemed at the time, now seems a long-distant speck on the horizon compared to the looming next season.
No amount of examples can show that memories are worthless, however, or that they should be done away with altogether. Like any good scrapbook, they have their place — sequestered in some closet, providing nostalgic trips for lazy afternoons.
But ultimately, Dooley got it right when he looked ahead to next year, even as a great one culminated. There's just too much yet to happen to focus on the things that already have.
- Edited by Cory Bunting