To help build quality team, coach seeks returned missionaries
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Returned missionaries with baseball talent are appreciated not only at BYU, but also in several baseball programs.
One is NAIA Division I defending national champion Bellevue College in Bellevue, Neb., where coach Mike Evans actively pursues returned missionaries. BYU coach Gary Pullins says that after he fills his vacant roster spots, he is happy to give his colleague from Nebraska an assist finding quality players who are returned missionaries."What a great credit to the young men who serve missions to have another college calling us to find out which returned missionaries we are not going to recruit so that they can go after them," Pullins said.
Describing his interest in Mormon missionaries, Evans, who is not LDS, said: "Kids who have been on a mission are so much more mature; they know where they are going. I love to recruit kids like that. They show that they think of other people besides themselves. Unselfishness is what I am looking for on the baseball field."
Picking up a few returned missionaries here and there has contributed to the building of one of the NAIA's most powerful baseball programs at Bellevue. A regular member of the NAIA top 25 rankings, the Bruins won the title last year with a 53-12 record.
The Utahns who played on that team included returned missionaries Royden Tait from Enterprise, and Derrick Hope and Jason Jarvis, who played for Viewmont High School in Bountiful.
Evans said he doesn't make members of his team play on Sunday and has the recruiting advantage, with returned missionaries, of an LDS meetinghouse adjacent to the campus.
Concerning players regaining their baseball skills after laying off two years to serve a mission, Evans said: "It takes them a little bit of time to get back into their game. But their work ethic is good enough to get them back."
He added that their maturity level is an advantage in coming back, giving them an advantage over some other players who are somewhat immature because they are out on their own for the first time.
Evans said all the returned missionaries who have played for him have been real success stories and that he "just loved the kids and what they are about."
