UNC READY TO TAKE FLIGHT?

At the start of the 2005 season, University of Northern Colorado baseball coach Kevin Smallcomb was sitting in the dugout at the University of Arizona. His team was losing 15-0 to the No. 11-ranked Wildcats. He'd already used his two best pitchers and it was only the second inning with two more games left in the series.

Those are the times that are hardest on Smallcomb. The losses that are hardest to swallow.

Still, Smallcomb knows that his team has made progress in the past three years, even if the record doesn't show it.

While the Bears were only 15-36 this past season, their worst record since 2001, they lost 20 of those games by three runs or less in a season where the Bears played some of the toughest competition in school history and only 15 home games.

More importantly, the program is alive and well despite budget reductions and scholarship cuts in a time when Division I collegiate baseball programs in Colorado are nearly as extinct as the dinosaur.

The Bears are one of only two teams along with Air Force in the state that has Division I baseball programs. While bigger schools such as the University of Colorado and Colorado State dropped baseball long ago, UNC has managed to survive despite the challenges of playing baseball in Colorado in some hard economic times.

At times it is not easy. The Bears are operating on a shoestring budget of $200,000 and four full-ride scholarships next season.

They also play a demanding road schedule against Division I powerhouses like Arizona, Arkansas and Nebraska to help bring money into the program and entice recruits to play in Colorado.

Even playing their limited home schedule is a challenge when weather can wipe out a home series at any second.

So how has UNC been able to manage to stay afloat as a program where others have failed?

Those who have been long-time supporters of college baseball in the state like UNC alum and Denver radio personality Irv Brown said it starts with tradition that goes back to the days of UNC coaches Pete Butler and Tom Petroff, who guided the Bears to 10 College World Series appearances.

"It would be very easy for them to bag it because it doesn't pay, but it is a tradition and there would be a lot of people that would be very ticked off if they did," Brown said.

Former major league pitcher Mark Knudson, who played for Colorado State before the program was dropped in 1992, credits UNC for "sticking with baseball when it was trendy to drop it."

"Other places, it was easy to drop it because there wasn't much of an outcry," Knudson said. "I think Greeley is such a good baseball town, there would have been an outcry had they dropped baseball."

Knudson also knows that UNC has been creative in how it uses it budget to recruit athletes and keep the program going. Besides having a strong alumni base to help financially support the program, the Bears have spread the wealth when it comes to using scholarship dollars by dividing four full-rides totaling $40,000 dollars among 20 players. They also take advantage of tuition waivers for out-of-state players.

"They want to see you are invested in them," Smallcomb said.

Smallcomb said the biggest recruiter of all for this program is the school itself since UNC is the only in-state liberal arts college that offers baseball. Being a teacher's college, UNC also trains future high school and college baseball coaches that spread the word of UNC's rich baseball tradition.

If that isn't enough, he sells them on playing a competitive Division I schedule like this past season in which the Bears played in five different regions against six teams that made the NCAA regionals. UNC senior Chad Murray said that was a big reason he decided to come to UNC after spending time at William and Mary and Dixie Community College.

Still, Murray said that it takes a certain type of "blue collar" player to play at UNC.

"We'll go into a place and we'll play in front of 6,000 people and get home-towned by umpires and get teamed up by the fans, but we know why we are there and the purpose of it and we don't get intimidated by it."

The UNC baseball budget for the 2007-08 fiscal year is $200,000, down $25,000 from a year ago. The Bears have four full-ride scholarships totaling $40,000, down from six scholarships a year ago. The NCAA maximum scholarships allowed for Division I baseball programs is 11.78.