Overview:
Westmont’s senior second baseman broke the school record for runs scored while batting .398 to rank fifth-best in school history
Brady Renck honored his father today, like millions of other sons and daughters.
Denver TV sportscaster Troy Renck had been a dutiful dad, playing years of catch with Westmont College’s star second baseman.
“He still throws BP to me,” the younger Renck told Noozhawk. “We just hit batting practice on Thursday.”
Dad’s biggest catch, however, was to keep his son from falling.
Renck, the leading hitter for the Warriors’ recently crowned NAIA National Championship baseball team, was mired in the depths of a 1-for-28 slump two years ago when he called his father with the news:
He was leaving Westmont … He was quitting baseball.
“I was in my car when I called,” Brady recalled. “We couldn’t use our locker rooms because of COVID.
“I was still in my full uniform — it was pearly white because I didn’t get on base that day — and I was crying my eyes out.
“I told him, ‘Dad, I can’t do this anymore … I need to come home.’”
The coronavirus epidemic had laid Renck low in both body and mind midway through his sophomore year of 2020-2021.
He’d contracted COVID-19 while on winter break and wound up missing the first 10 days of practice.
“I had to be the guinea pig for the return-to-play protocol,” he recalled. “I had to ride the bike for like 45 minutes for 10 days straight … My butt had never been more sore.”
He had already been wounded by the breakup of a relationship.
“It ended kind of abruptly while I was away from home,” Renck said. “It was something that really set me back mentally.
“Going into the season, I was already behind the eight ball mentally and physically.”
Opposing fielders seemed to get in front of every ball he struck. He managed just one hit during an 11-game span that stretched over three full weeks.
His batting average plummeted to .115 (6-for-51) after a four-game series against Hope International.
“I had a lot of high expectations for myself,” said Renck, who had batted .275 as a freshman while starting at shortstop for the Warriors. “My sophomore season was supposed to be my big breakthrough year, and I fell flat on my face.
“It was a humbling experience. I really didn’t know how to overcome it. I’d always been successful in sports.”
A Long Way from Longmont
Renck had batted what was believed to be a school-record .557 during his senior year at Longmont High School, located just 40 miles north of Denver.
He also played point guard for a Trojans’ basketball team that went 53-3 during a two-year span. Longmont won the State 4A championship during his junior year of 2018. They finished second in 2019 when he averaged 11.7 points and 7.1 assists per game.
“I’d never really failed in life,” Renck said. “My sophomore year at Westmont was the first time that I’d really hit rock bottom.”
His despondency deepened when the pandemic separated him from the camaraderie and support of his schoolmates.
“I couldn’t leave my room,” he said. “My classes were on Zoom. I was failing tests left and right … I felt stuck. I was fading fast.”
But Dad proved to be his best counsel.
The elder Renck, a former Major League Baseball beat writer for The Denver Post, had a working knowledge of the frustration that is endemic in the fickle game of baseball.
“He was covering the (Colorado) Rockies when I was little and everything in our life was baseball-related,” Brady said. “He was coaching me since I was 5 or 6 years old.
“That’s a connection we’re always going to have, and something I’m going to miss whenever I stop playing. He’s probably been the biggest inspiration and reason for me playing baseball.”
His father presented him with an option. Brady recalled his advice during their phone call as this:
“You owe it to your teammates and your coaches who believe in you that you can at least stick it out through the end of the season. If you still feel that way after that, you can quit.”
Turn of the Season
Robert Ruiz, the Warriors’ head coach at the time and now the school’s athletic director, hadn’t quit on Renck, starting him 49 times in the 52 games they played during the 2021 season.
“I’ll never forget how much confidence coach Ruiz had in me that year,” Renck said. “He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.
“I’m convinced that some of the guys on the team thought I had some dirt on him for continuing to write my name in the lineup card every day, knowing that I was going to go 0-for-3.”
Ruiz’s faith and Dad’s phone call began to pay off when Azusa Pacific arrived at Westmont’s Montecito campus on March 9. Renck went 2-for-3 and scored a key run in the seventh inning to lift the Warriors to a wild 12-10 victory.
He belted a triple and a double to score two more runs in an 8-6 win at William Jessup in Westmont’s next game.
By season’s end, Renck had raised his batting average 116 points to .231.
He kept silent about his personal struggles the entire way. Ruiz, however, found a subtle way to address it all during a leadership retreat before the start of their next season.
“He played this video to the whole team which showed the testimony of a former player,” Renck said. “It really got to me because the guy’s story was verbatim to mine.
“I didn’t really talk to Ruiz much that (sophomore) year. I really kept to myself. But that testimony made me feel like, ‘OK, he knows what I’m going through … He has my back with this.’”
Renck was ready to laugh in the face of his next failure that fall. It came during the first at-bat of his first intrasquad scrimmage at Russ Carr Field.
“I rolled over to second base and jokingly told everyone, ‘Here we go again!’” he recalled.
His next at-bat was a booming home run off All-America pitcher Bryan Peck that landed on Thorrington Soccer Field, far beyond the fence in right-centerfield.
“It was the furthest I’d ever hit a ball in my life,” Renck said. “I hadn’t hit a home run in a while, and I was like, ‘You know what? This year’s got some potential.’”
Making His Marks
The rest has been literal history.
He scored a school-record 63 runs during his junior season to lead Westmont to its first NAIA World Series berth.
He batted.324 while stealing 25 bases in 26 attempts and won the first of his two Gold Gloves as the top defensive second baseman in the Golden State Athletic Conference.
He topped his own school record this year by scoring 71 runs. He finished his career with the all-time mark of 166 — nine more than Michael Stefanic, who was called up to the big leagues on Friday by the Los Angeles Angels.
Renck’s batting average of .398 this season ranks fifth in Westmont’s record books, six points ahead of the .392 that Stefanic hit in 2018.
“I got to meet him at one or two of the alumni games,” Renck said. “He actually gave me some words of encouragement after that tough sophomore season.
“He’s such a great guy, and it’s such a cool story for us to have a guy like him representing us on the big stage.”
Renck was one of 16 seniors on a team that exceeded the success of the 2022 season. The Warriors set the school mark for victories with a record of 48-9 while winning the first NAIA National Championship in the programs’ history.
“Last year kind of felt like a Cinderella year,” Renck said of Westmont’s 45-13 season in 2022. “Just making it there seemed to be the end goal. It was something the school had never done before.
“Now the goal was to get there and win some games. Between me, (Ryan) DeSaegher, Robbie (Haw), Peck, and others, we were returning a lot of core players.
“The bigger stage didn’t quite get to us like it had last year. We felt we belonged there this time, and we had something to prove.”
They did have to handle the curveball of a coaching change.
Change at the Top
Ruiz took over as athletic director to facilitate Westmont’s move this fall to NCAA Division II status. He was replaced as head baseball coach by Tyler LaTorre, a minor-league catcher for 10 seasons who served as an assistant coach at San José State and Sacramento State.
“Ruiz was such a good coach for us, and such a good mentor,” Renck said. “There were definitely some growing pains in the fall, just getting to know coach LT.
“But he’s turned out to be such a good coach, and a fun coach to play for. He’s really good at making the whole environment feel like there’s no pressure, talking about how, ‘This is what we’re good at, and we love the game.’
“He really freed up a lot of guys to just go out there and play baseball.”
LaTorre celebrated Westmont’s 7-6 title victory over Lewis-Clark State — the hometown team at the Lewiston, Idaho, event — by lifting Renck into the air with a bear hug.
He described Renck as a major catalyst to Westmont’s championship.
“We coaches like to talk about things like, ‘This guy can’t beat us … He’s the guy we’ve got to pitch around,’” he said. “And for every team that we’ve played so far, Brady has been that guy.
“For him to excel despite that, it’s a testament to his drive, his competitiveness and his baseball intellect.”
Renck played hurt for the last part of the season, returning two weeks after pulling a hamstring muscle in mid-March.
“He showed his teammates what it looks like to battle through an injury and still play with some grit,” LaTorre said.
His sophomore failures, Renck realized, had actually girded him for what came later.
“It really opened my eyes,” he said. “I had been kind of cruising through life, and it taught me how to grow as a man.
“I learned how to face adversity head on, and to believe in something bigger than myself.
“I’d always felt that God gave His hardest battles to His toughest soldiers, and so I’m super-grateful for whatever comes next for me.”
Power Surge
Renck’s physical maturation became evident during his junior year when he hit a team-high 14 home runs. Timothy Leary is the only Warrior to ever hit more, having set the school record with 16 in 2010 and then breaking it with 17 in 2012.
Renck, a 6-foot and 175-pound senior, couldn’t imagine even playing college baseball when he was a 5-foot-2, 112-pound sophomore at Longmont High.
“I was the tiniest kid out there,” he said. “I was so small that I thought, ‘There’s just no way I’m good enough to play this game.’”
And yet, he led Longmont with a .371 batting average that sophomore season. He had a literal brother in arms that year in Dagin Renck, who was the team’s star senior pitcher.
“That was one of my coolest seasons ever, it being the first time we’d ever played on the same team,” Brady said. “We had a lot of backyard battles while growing up, playing this game of mini-baseball with tennis balls.
“He’s always been a huge mentor … He’s always helped me out.”
Dagin, who continued on to pitch for the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, now works in video analytics for the San Francisco Giants’ Double-A farm club in Richmond, Virginia.
“He always jokes that he’s the smartest one in the family, so every time I need advice or help with something — if my computer is broke or something — he’s the first guy I call,” Brady said. “He’s always been there for me.
“Seeing him forge his path in baseball has also been inspirational.”
Renck, an honors student in communications, is hopeful that his big year leads to an opportunity in professional baseball.
But he has also worked toward an off-the-field career in athletics. Much to the surprise of his new coach, he served as part of the broadcast crew for Westmont basketball games.
“I’d never heard him put four words together,” LaTorre said. “But once I watched a game on TV, I saw a different person. I heard a different person.
“That continued on through the year as I got to know him.
“He was a joy to coach because you don’t have to coach him. You let a guy like that have the freedom to go out and make mistakes and then overcome them.”
World Series Conquerors
Renck, who went 4-for-13 with two doubles in the first three games of the World Series, remained unfazed after going 0-for-7 in the next two.
He shrugged off the running catch that Lewis-Clark State’s Carter Booth made of his long drive to the centerfield wall during the first inning of the championship game.
Renck’s next blow just two innings later beat Booth to that wall. He slid in for a triple and scored moments later on DeSaegher’s single to give the Warriors a 3-1 lead.
Renck also singled and scored in the fourth on Bryce McFeely’s hit, increasing Westmont’s margin to 5-1.
“I was definitely trying to keep the pressure on them because that’s such a tough place to play,” he said of Lewiston. “There were about 4,500 people there, and probably 4,300 of them were L-C State fans.
“I was happy to do my job and keep the crowd out of it.”
Lewis-Clark State did rally to tie the game at 6-all in the seventh. Haw, however, capped the game-winning rally one inning later by scoring on Parker O’Neil’s bases-loaded walk.
Westmont relief pitcher Gabe Arteaga got the game’s final three outs.
After McFeely snagged the last one on a pop-up to right, the whole team rushed together into a celebratory dogpile.
“We have gone through so many ups and downs,” Haw said afterward. “One thing we told each other is that we were going to stick together.”
He was talking, in part, about his roommate and infield partner.
Renck’s mother, Leahann, of course, knew the full story when Brady began to speak at the team’s Senior Dinner a few weeks earlier.
“Mom was just bawling right in front of me the entire time, and I just completely lost it,” Brady said. “I cried on stage in front of all my teammates and lost all my credibility in the locker room.
“But it was worth it.”
Haw had been honored as Westmont baseball’s top scholar-athlete the previous year at the school’s annual Golden Eagle banquet sponsored by Gerd and Pete Jordano. He passed that award on to Renck this year as though they were just turning another double play.
“To be honest, that award fits him way better than it fits me,” Renck said. “That guy is involved in so many programs, doing so much stuff, while serving as captain of the team, playing shortstop and studying engineering.
“His life is way, way harder than mine.”
He smiled at the irony of those words. The phone call to Dad suddenly seemed like ages ago.
