Play Ball…Again!

Umpqua Community College revives its baseball program with a home-run coaching hire and a new downtown home for its players.

Story by Jim Hays Photos by Thomas Boyd

The Umpqua Community College RiverHawks opened their 2020 baseball season in late February. While on the surface that event might not seem worthy of a news flash, around UCC it was a big deal. That’s because it was the school’s first Opening Day in more than three decades.

Baseball is back at UCC, which dropped the program in the 1980s in a round of cost-cutting. 

The reboot is part of the college’s effort to boost enrollment by expanding its athletic program. UCC counts about 2,400 full-time equivalent students, but enrollment numbers have been flat during the past five years, according to the website CommunityCollegeReview.com. 

Just three years ago, when Craig Jackson took over as athletic director, UCC offered only volleyball and men’s and women’s basketball. It has since added men’s and women’s
cross country, men’s and women’s track and field, wrestling and
obstacle-course racing.

Adding a baseball program made sense for the college. The Umpqua Valley has a long baseball tradition that includes strong high school programs and Roseburg’s always-competitive Dr. Stewart’s American Legion summer team. Roseburg has played host to the American Legion World Series on three occasions and has frequently hosted the Oregon state legion tournament.

Starting a program from scratch, however, is a tall order. But A.D. Jackson is confident he found the right guy for the job in head coach Jeremiah Robbins. A 1990 graduate of Douglas High in Winston, Robbins brings a championship pedigree to UCC. Hired in 2018 to start the program, Robbins was coming off a six-year run as head coach at Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho, where his teams won three consecutive NAIA national championships.

Robbins’ resume also includes a successful seven-year stint at Western Oregon State University before Lewis-Clark, and he is a five-time national coach of the year.

He jumped at the chance to be the founder of UCC’s revived baseball program and, not incidentally, to return to his home area, where he coached Douglas High to back-to-back league championships early in his career.

Robbins also coached Dr. Stewart’s last summer, a post he held for two seasons before taking the job at Western Oregon.  

“Coming home and building a program from scratch is the chance of a lifetime,” Robbins says.

For his part, Jackson is thrilled to have Robbins aboard.

“We are beyond fortunate to have him leave one of the top NAIA baseball programs in the country to join the RiverHawks,” Jackson says.

For the inaugural season, Robbins has assembled a 32-man roster that includes 20 players from Oregon and two from Douglas County — infielder Jacob Luther from Umpqua Valley Christian and pitcher Payton Hope from Sutherlin. It’s a young group — all but three of the players are freshmen. Several mentioned the chance to play for Robbins specifically as a big reason they came to UCC.

To house the players, UCC leased the Flegel Center in downtown Roseburg, a one-time armory, and retrofitted it as a combination dormitory and indoor practice facility

“I heard about him and I knew they were building something here and I wanted to be a part of that,” says Luther, who was a Class 1A all-state player at UVC.

“I look for talented kids, but first and foremost, I’m looking for kids who are great human beings,” Robbins says. “I don’t care how much talent a player has, if he’s not a good person, I don’t want him.”

To house the players, UCC leased the Fleger Center in downtown Roseburg, a one-time armory, and retrofitted it as a combination dormitory and indoor practice facility. The large main floor includes an artificial-turf carpet and can be configured with nets for batting practice and pitching sessions.

Most of the players live there, too, and some helped with remodeling the space for baseball practice, wielding paint brushes and brooms.

“It’s been a great experience getting to know the other guys, and I think it’s really bringing us together as a team,” says Chris Thomson, a freshman pitcher-outfielder from Calgary, Alberta, who adds that he’s also been made to feel welcome in Roseburg. “People have seen us on the street and tell us they’re glad to have us here and ask when our games are.”

The RiverHawks are playing a 50-game schedule with Champion Car Wash Field in Stewart Park as their home turf. The facility was renovated with new dugouts and an all-weather turf field that UCC hopes will minimize rainouts for its 29-game home slate.

UCC is part of the 29-team Northwest Athletic Conference and plays in the NWAC’s South Division, whose eight members include Oregon community colleges Chemeketa, Clackamas, Lane, Linn-Benton, Mt. Hood, Southwest Oregon and Umpqua, in addition to Clark College in Washington.

Robbins regards the NWAC South as “maybe the toughest division in the conference,” and knows his upstarts will be tested all season.

“Our goal, of course, is to win every game and the conference championship,” he says. “But we’re realistic.”