Baseball: Quite a journey – UL’s Mayer completing college career filled with sacrifice

UL relief pitcher Kendall Mayer / Brad Kemp/ragincajuns.com

Tim Buckley, The Advertiser, May 15, 2013

In the classroom. On the field. In the real world.

As UL baseball player Kendall Mayer has made his way around the map – to Louisiana by way of Utah, Washington and Oklahoma, with a short but inspiring visit to Africa wedged in as well – sacrifice simply comes with the territory.

A fair share of sleep-deprived nights have helped lead to Mayer being nominated by UL for the Sun Belt Conference’s male athlete postgraduate scholarship award, whose winner will be publicly announced early next week.

Though his role is a somewhat limited one, the senior short-relief pitcher owns the lowest ERA – 2.13 – on the Ragin’ Cajun staff as UL heads into its final Sun Belt series of the 2013 regular season starting tonight at rival UL Monroe.

Since he arrived in Lafayette in 2011 from Oklahoma’s Seminole State College, Mayer has taken a missionary trip to Kenya, become the only married player on UL’s current roster and secured a graduate assistantship in sports administration and event management that he’ll start later this year at the University of Oklahoma.

The Utah native also has watched UL go from a club that didn’t even qualify for last year’s Sun Belt Tournament to one that this season is in line for an almost-certain NCAA Regional berth.

Yet the fact the Cajuns have turned themselves from a team that went 23-30 in 2012 to one that is now 35-17 isn’t the only evidence, Mayer suggests, when it comes to making a convincing case for successful transformation.

“Just team-wise, team chemistry-wise, we’re a lot closer than last year,” he said.

“I think everyone decided when we came back that whatever it takes we’re gonna try to do and achieve what we want,” added Mayer, who is 1-0 with 22 strikeouts and just five hits allowed in his 12.2 innings pitched this season. “I think you see it on the field – that we’re a bunch of guys that made sacrifices in the offseason.”

The journey started for Mayer out West, where the Sandy, Utah resident played for a Cottonwood High team in Salt Lake City that won state titles during his freshman, sophomore and junior seasons.

He signed coming out of Cottonwood with Washington State, in the same state where he lived with his family for several years as a child. Mayer spent one year with the Cougars, pitching one scoreless inning in his only appearance.

From Washington State it was on to Seminole, where he met his now-wife Ashtyn and earned an offer from the Cajuns.

She followed Mayer to Lafayette, and the two were married last August in Oklahoma.

“There are times when my wife might not see me when I’m studying, you know?” said Mayer, who took a 3.5-plus grade-point average into this season.

“That’s one thing that’s incredible. The success as far as school and everything – it’s also a big accomplishment for my wife, because she gave up a lot as well just for me to be able to chase after my dream. It’s pretty cool.

“She’s always been one,” he added, “to say, ‘If that’s your dream, I’m gonna support it.’ ”

Such was the case even when Mayer briefly debated whether or not to play his senior season with the Cajuns.

“I think all these guys,” UL coach Tony Robichaux said, “can be better players if they had, sometimes, more stability in their lives. … He’s got that piece to help him stay stable.

“She sacrificed,” Robichaux added, “for him to come down here, for him to continue to play the game.”

To help get the two get through their first year as a married couple, Ashtyn temporarily put aside her pursuit of a psychology degree.

She’s been working as a legal secretary while Mayer finishes at UL, where he’ll earn his bachelor’s degree in sports management this summer.

At Oklahoma, he’ll work on a master’s in intercollegiate athletics administration.

“Pretty much the thing I told her,” Mayer said, “was, ‘If you can help me get through school, in the end I’m gonna make sure you get your degree.’

“It’s worked out. Marriage, you know – it’s exactly like a team. There’s good days, there’s bad days. But it’s a great experience and … I wouldn’t change anything about it.”

It was while he was at Seminole that Mayer also felt called to make a missionary trip.

He phoned his half-brother, Zane Officer, an ordained Salt Lake City pastor with ties to International Missions Board, an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention that dispatches evangelical Christian missionaries throughout the world.

Between his first and second semesters at UL, prior to the start of last season, Mayer found himself with Officer sharing their faith for 10 days in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya.

The audience was comprised of homeless teenagers, many of them living with a pack mentality and sniffing glue as their preferred drug for diverting attention from hunger pains and other tribulations presented by simple day-to-day survival.

“Each day we went with a different pastor that was trying to minister to different areas within Nairobi,” Mayer said. “It was cool being in completely different cultures, and seeing the same religious views that you’re celebrating together.”

The two shared bible stories with the youths. They delivered food, handed out candy and distributed school supplies. They even gifted some Ragin’ Cajuns T-shirts.

Mayer brought a few gloves and tried to teach some of the pastors how to throw a baseball, using cricket as a rough basis of comparison for those who had no clue about the American game he plays.

He also was drawn into soccer games with kids who wound up schooling him in much more than their sport of choice.

“It was life-changing in the sense that I realized so many people take what we have for granted,” Mayer said.

“Just being around those kids, I’m like, ‘I’m gonna try to make the most of everything I have.’ And I’ve really tried to do that, as far as baseball and in school.”

From schoolwork to faith and family life, the relief pitcher has a background Robichaux feels is key to Mayer being one of the unsung rocks on his roster.

With action in 10 games so far this season, he’s one of just five Cajuns with double-digit relief appearances in 2013.

But only one of UL’s 10 other active pitchers have pitched fewer innings than Mayer.

Still, even though he may not be called to the mound as frequently as others, Robichaux considers him integral to the base of a metaphorical iceberg.

“He’s a guy that has done a great job for us keeping everything together,” Robichaux said.

“Above the water you see the tip of the iceberg, but underneath it is an enormous, enormous base that we don’t see. If that base cracks, then the iceberg sinks. … He’s part of that base, and I think those kind of guys are invaluable to a team.”

In this case, it’s a club that had some cracks a season ago.

But, with a firm foot in next week’s Sun Belt Tournament and probable postseason play beyond that, it’s also one that figured out how to band together.

“It’s just an unbelievable team,” Mayer said, “as far as guys pulling for each other, guys that want each other to succeed.”