Dreams are contagious
Louisiana Tech’s J.C. Love Field at Pat Patterson Park comes alive during baseball games but for awhile following the 2019 tornado, fans, players and coaches weren’t able to enjoy the friendly confines. Photo by Tom Morris
Philip Matulia’s locker had more cushions than your typical Division I setup.
It’s 2020 and the Louisiana Tech baseball team has been without a permanent home for close to a year after an EF-3 tornado (estimated wind gusts between 136- 165 mph) ripped apart multiple athletic facilities and sent the Bulldogs into on-the-fly operations.
Matulia, along with his teammates, were left sharing a practice field with the Ruston High baseball program, having to pack up and make way for Ruston’s afternoon practices, relegated to car seats and beds of trucks as their locker rooms.
Game jerseys, pants, and every other piece of gear draped over his couch at his apartment and crammed under piles of garbs inside passenger seats.
“I try to forget those days,” Matulia said with a laugh. “We’d go out there at noon, do our hitting and fielding, and they had practice at 3 p.m. and we’d go eat and then go back for intrasquads at 6.”
In the week after the tornado, Tech head coach Lane Burroughs met with his team before life of substitute shelves and cluttered couches became the norm.
He told his team they were free to leave the program, void of penalty or risk of pariah and that what was coming next wasn’t going to be easy.
No one transferred. No coaches jumped to bigger gigs.
In Burroughs’ mind, it was the first sign the tornado didn’t just leave miles of wreckage and shock in its wake. The Bulldogs were reborn themselves, with irreplaceable culture that was not about to be knocked down.
“I think the stars kind of aligned that year, we’re out there at Ruston High School, I think the culture that we set — nobody left,” Burroughs said. “ I’ll say that till I leave here and till the last game I coach as long as we’re recruiting. You want to talk about culture and family? We didn’t have a home for two years and none of our guys left. We had four All-Americans when you talk about Parker Bates, Hunter Wells, Jonathan Fincher, Taylor Young. Those guys could have went other places and played. They stayed and that’s why we had success.”
What awaited them on the other side?
The rebirth of the Love Shack and a reenergized fanbase ready to come back to the ballpark in droves.
Tech finished the 2022 season 29th in national average attendance ( 2,515) – a program record and highest of amongst Conference USA programs.
The Bulldogs’ total attendance (80,492) finished 30th nationally – highest of all C-USA teams and more than Louisville and Pac- 12 Champion Stanford.
“I can remember showing up here, looking over my contract and one of the things said, ‘ if you sell this many season tickets, you might get a bonus here,” Burroughs said. “And I remember asking the guy at the time, ‘What are the chances that we sell that many season tickets?’ And his answer was, ‘That’ll never happen.’”
Dreams are contagious
Teri Netterville was moving about her house doing mundane work when a sports hit on the local news hit the airwaves in the June 2016.
Standing in her living room in Shreveport, Netterville remembers the first time hearing the voice and unforgettable message of Lane Burroughs, as the former Northwestern State coach was introduced at Louisiana Tech.
Her oldest son, Steele, was a year from graduating from C.E. Byrd High School, and two years from eventually joining the bold-speaking coach on Teri’s TV screen as a Bulldog.
“There was something about his face and how he was talking that I rewound the story and remember listening to him say right to the camera, ‘ We will host a regional here at Louisiana Tech.’ And he said it so matter of fact. When he said that, I had chills,” Netterville said.
In an instant, she was reminded of a saying her father used to tell her when she was younger.
Burroughs’ dream for what Tech baseball could become flashed before her eyes.
“My dad was really I think the first person to ever put into words something so evident and powerful, and yet it’s not really spoken about: the fact that dreams are contagious,” Netterville said. “If you think about it, dreams are contagious, and we can literally catch the dream of another if it sparks in our soul. I believe it’s all caught on because the Ruston community caught Coach Burroughs’ dream.”
And while the visions of turning Ruston into a gem in the college baseball world didn’t include a violent tornado that ripped apart the Bulldogs’ stadium, it’s what came after that leaves fans and players reassured it’s all worked out like it was supposed to.
The new “Love Shack” was rebuilt by the start of the 2021 season and ushered in a new era of Tech baseball, with 675 days passing from the last time the Bulldogs played a game on campus.
By the time fans could reenter the park, they were treated to new stadium viewing lines and a fixed seating capacity of 1,322. Tailgate tents, new stadium walls, press box and suite levels lined the outer layer of the new home of the Diamond Dogs.
Kody Roller, otherwise known through his Tech baseball Twitter account Right Field Dawgs, has always been a Bulldog fan.
Ask him today, and even he didn’t anticipate the Ruston community coming back to the ballpark in full droves like they have and walking into a stadium that felt just like the old home they lost, and maybe even better.
Roller, a junior at Tech, is more than surprised. He’s grateful.
“The new stadium has something to do with it, no doubt,” Roller said. “The tornado brought Ruston together itself and of course the team’s success brought the city out of the slump it was in. The atmosphere, it feels like home. You never truly meet a stranger there. That’s how they’ve made it feel.”
