Oregon State, Coastal Carolina baseball led by former players in College World Series 2025
OMAHA, Neb. ― When Gavin Turley grounded out to second base, allowing Trent Caraway to score in the fourth inning of Oregon State's game against Louisville on June 13, he broke the program's postseason RBI record.
The previous holder of that record? His own coach, Mitch Canham.
Canham was a former Beaver catcher who won two national titles in 2006 and 2007. He took the head coaching job at Oregon State in 2019 after the retirement of longtime coach Pat Casey, for whom he'd played. But despite the Beavers being a postseason mainstay, Canham had never led them back to Omaha − until now.
Oregon State won its opening game of the 2025 Men's College World Series, 4-3, on a walk-off double by Turley, and the Beavers will face Coastal Carolina on June 15 with a spot in the semifinals on the line.
Chanticleers coach Kevin Schnall has championship experience of his own. He was the associate head coach under Gary Gilmore when the program won its first national title in 2016. That was Coastal Carolina's first-ever trip to Omaha. Now, in his first year as head coach after Gilmore's retirement, Schnall has led the Chanticleers to their second.
"Being here is more fulfilling than being here as a player, because I get to watch so many other people have joy and turn around and look at Beaver Nation supporting us the entirety of the way and watching these guys just glow," Canham said. "You don't necessarily see that as a player. ... The joy is double of what it was as a player, and those were amazing times that still bring back − you've got to choke back tears when you watch highlights of it from way back when."
When Turley was asked if he'd seen Canham's postseason highlights, Canham shook his head − but Turley admitted he'd seen them.
"Nothing to inspire him as far as the catching goes," Canham said.
"More the rapping inspires us," Turley said, referring to a rap song Canham and other Oregon State players created in 2007.
The Beavers have been through adversity in the past year. The collapse of the Pac-12 left them without a conference and they opted for independence, the first high-level baseball team to attempt to play as an independent since Miami in the early 2000s. While several other Oregon State teams lost most of their players to the transfer portal, the baseball team not only kept key players like Turley and Trent Caraway, it also added top transfer Aiva Arquette and freshman Dax Whitney, who earned the win in the Omaha opener with 5⅓ innings of one-run ball.
Then there's Schnall and the Chanticleers, who are looking to make a different kind of history. A first-year head coach has never won a title. A mid-major team − Coastal Carolina plays in the Sun Belt − hasn't won a title since the Chanticleers won their first, and it's been done just twice in the last two decades.
Because Schnall had been on staff for so long, he managed to keep his top players, including catcher Caden Bodine and starting pitchers Cameron Flukey, Riley Eikhoff and Jacob Morrison. His staff was a mix of people with previous experience at Coastal Carolina, like recruiting coordinator Chad Oxendine and longtime assistant Matt Schilling, plus a few coaches with SEC experience in Matt Williams (South Carolina) and Tyler Shewmaker (Vanderbilt).
Eikhoff and Flukey combined for eight innings in the opening win over Arizona.
"The processes are the same," Schnall said of returning to Omaha as the head man. "The responsibilities are a little bit different. I've got to talk behind the mic more. Sometimes I like to be in the weeds and look at scouting reports and go out the back door and not have to talk to anybody. So that is a little bit of an adjustment."
Both coaches have rosters that are largely homegrown in an era where more and more teams have opted to build through the transfer portal. At Oregon State, Whitney was the only true freshman to start his team's College World Series opener. While Arquette was a transfer, Turley and Caraway were high-school recruits. All three of the pitchers who appeared in Coastal Carolina's opener chose the Chanticleers out of high school. Bodine, too, has been with Coastal Carolina since the start.
And the two coaches have been loyal, too. After an eight-year career playing in the minor leagues, Canham worked as a minor league coach for four seasons before returning to his alma mater. Schnall played for the Chanticleers from 1995-99, then returned to the school after a two-year stint in the minors. He spent three seasons as an assistant at UCF but then returned to Coastal Carolina. His first season back, the team won the national championship.
Whichever of the two teams emerges victorious in the winners bracket game will be in the drivers seat to advance to the championship series. There, Canham or Schnall could write a new chapter in his legacy.
Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X @aria_gerson.