Men's Baseball | 2/5/2023 9:16:00 PM

Nelson Gord didn't apply for the Harper College baseball coaching job when it opened up after the 2019 season. But his name kept popping up enough to pique the interest of then-athletic director Doug Spiwak.

"He called and said, "I've got 60 to 70 applicants with varying degrees of experience and interest and 20 listed you as a reference,'" Gord said. "'Do you have any interest in taking a look at this?' It was April 2020, I was sitting home in the middle of COVID and going stir-crazy.

"I talked to my wife (Sarah) and said I think I want to do this, I can recruit well and I know all the guys close to home. She said, 'Go for it.'"

So Gord did and is now entering his third season in charge in Palatine. The 1999 Buffalo Grove graduate inherited a program that won only 5 games in 2019 but the outlook is the upward progression will continue from 2 wins in Gord's first year - yes, only 2 - to 13 last year.

"It's a night-and-day difference," Gord said. "It's the first time it's all guys we recruited who are on the field and we return most of our lineup and pitching."

Gord played in programs run by a unique trio of longtime head coaches at BG in John Wendell in baseball, Rich Roberts in football and Doug Millstone in basketball. He was a Daily Herald All-Area pick and Mid-Suburban East co-Player of the Year as the baseball team won a school-record 29 games and reached a sectional final in 1999. He also was an all-conference pick for the football team that won the MSL East in 1998.

From there he was a two-time all-Horizon League third baseman at UIC, played professionally for the Schaumburg Flyers and Kansas City T-Bones and was part of the Houston Astros' spring training minor league camp. Gord was also familiar with junior college baseball as an assistant at Harper and Oakton. He had a successful six-year run as a high school head coach at Notre Dame before stepping down to devote more time to his family and three young kids (Lacey, Kendall and Tanner).

But the timing was right to return to coaching at Harper since his kids were older. As if the demands of his new job weren't challenging enough, because of COVID he could only meet with his team via Zoom calls until March 15, 2021, which was less than two weeks before the season opener.

He quickly found more challenges ahead.

"In our first scrimmage no one threw 80 (mph)," Gord said. "I had a radar gun, quickly put it away and didn't take it out again that season.

"Adam O'Malley, my assistant then, would sit and look at me and say, 'How are you staying this calm right now?' I said, 'What else are you gonna do? We don't have the horses, so we've got to stay positive and stay calm. 

"The crazy thing is we ended up having a second-team all-American (Joey Fitzgerald Jr (Crystal Lake, IL/Marian Central Catholic).) in the lineup. It was an example of how some guys really grew during the downtime and used it wisely and others kind of coasted."

Fitzgerald Jr., from Marian Central in Woodstock, was also at Harper last year and is now playing at Central Methodist University, one of the top NAIA programs in the country. All-region and all-conference picks Kaden Gray (Wyoming, ON/LCCVI) and Ehire Adrianza were big parts of the program's significant improvement as it won 7 of its last 12 games.

Harper's season-ending loss in the Region IV tournament was 12-11 in 10 innings to a Joliet team that won 36 games and the N4C league title and was ranked as high as eighth nationally in the NJCAA Division III polls. The good news for Gord is he has seven starters and three of his top five pitchers back. 

Having connections in all corners of the baseball world helps. Gord was teammates with Gray's father Brett on the Flyers. Ehire Adrianza, the nephew of Ozzie Guillen and brother of Atlanta Braves veteran infielder Jose Adrianza, came to Harper from Miami through Gord's relationship with Ozzie Guillen Jr. And two of his top returnees, outfielder George Betevis (Hanover Park, IL/Bartlett High School) and Nic Castrovillari (Hanover Park, IL/Bartlett High School), played at Bartlett for Chris Baum, who was an assistant to Gord at Notre Dame.

Gord also knows the importance of recruiting the MSL and is excited about freshmen such as outfielders Tommy Jusi (Hoffman Estates, IL/Fremd High School) and Cole Ratliff (Palatine, IL/Fremd High School) from Fremd and pitcher Steven Byrne (Schaumburg, IL/Schaumburg High School) from Schaumburg. Gord said one of his selling points is the Harper Promise Scholarship program which pays in-district public school students (which encompasses all 12 MSL schools) up to two years of their tuition as long as they meet certain criteria. Harper doesn't offer athletic scholarships as an NJCAA D-III program.

Harper College baseball coach and Buffalo Grove grad Nelson Gord surveys the action in the third-base coaching box.
"One of my first big things was talking to (Palatine's) Paul Belo, (Prospect's) Ross Giusti, (Buffalo Grove's) Bill Montemayor and all the MSL coaches about the program and all the steps," Gord said. "You can fall back, play a couple of years of baseball for free and it's a good position to be in."

Gord said one of the great aspects of junior college athletics and baseball is the mix of players who are driven to reach a higher level at a four-year program and others looking to play a little longer as they figure out their next step academically.

"That's the neat part from a team dynamics standpoint," Gord said. "It mirrors what the real world is like. You don't have 35 guys who are all elite-level players like a big D-I program. You have some guys who want to be part of something and really just love the game. You are trying to lead them to work together.

"I try to educate them on different opportunities out there, and the realization that your value is not just linked to your performance on the field and you can bring a lot to a program."

One of the big challenges can be convincing players to stay close to home rather than go to junior colleges outside the area. The other is in Harper's backyard with the powerhouse Oakton program led by Bill Fratto that just went to its fourth consecutive NJCAA D-III World Series and won it all in 2018.

Harper lost 5-2 and 8-6 and tied 6-6 against Oakton last spring and Gord said his team won a couple of their matchups during an 8-8 finish last fall. Gord, who coached with Fratto in 2009-10, said losing a couple of in-district recruits to Oakton wasn't surprising considering its long run of success.

"Oakton will be the bar," Gord said. "It's very conceivable we could be a .500 team in the 20-25 win range and still have a chance to compete and advance to the D-III World Series. If things click, the win total could be higher."

And that would be a long way in a short time from where things started for Nelson Gord at Harper.