Columnist Ron Kantowski: Rebels become So. Nevada’s team

Thursday, June 3, 2004 | 9:40 a.m.

Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

There's more than one reason to cheer -- provided you're not in the media, of course -- for the Rebels against Stanford in Friday's NCAA baseball regional in Palo Alto, Calif., and it's not just because they will need all the help they can get against the nation's top-ranked college baseball team.

The biggest one is that the Rebels' have become Las Vegas' team -- not because they have captured our indifferent city's interest, but because the majority of the players grew up here.

Ten of the Rebels who will say their prayers against the Cardinal are native Las Vegans. The Rebels are Henderson's team, too, as relief pitcher Ben Scheinblum is a former Green Valley Gator. And they're even Reno's team, as shortstop Peter White managed to escape the Biggest Little City in the World after they rolled up the sidewalks on Virginia Street to play for the Rebels.

For years, I have harped that UNLV should be more proactive in recruiting local talent, especially in the nonrevenue sports (which at the current rate, may soon be all of them). At minimum, I believe every bench warmer should be a Clark County resident, because that way, at least a few parents and girlfriends would come to the games.

The UNLV baseball team has gone a step further. Six of the nine players in Friday's projected starting lineup (in that designated hitter Ryan Bird hails from San Diego, we'll use National League rules for the sake of this story) are Southern Nevadans.

One of those is right fielder Eric Nielsen (Silverado), the Mountain West player of the year. Jake Vose (Cimarron Memorial/CCSN), who drew the starting pitching assignment to face Stanford, doesn't sleep in the dorm or eat at the cafeteria, either. Neither do second baseman Ryan Ruiz (Silverado), third baseman Zeke Parraz (Green Valley/CCSN), left fielder Andrew D'Angelo (Las Vegas High/CCSN), center fielder Brent Johnson (Durango) and pitchers David Seccombe (Cimaarron-Memorial), Kyle Tabeck (Bonanza), Jason Guerra (Eldorado), Matt Wagner (Cimarron-Memorial) and Shane Clatterbuck (Chaparral/CCSN).

UNLV's Buddy Gouldsmith has got to be one of the few coaches in the country who, when he kisses his wife goodbye before leaving on a recruiting trip, tells her he'll be back in a couple of hours.

And there's more -- at least a few more -- on the way. Bryce Massanari, a catcher at Centennial, has committed to play for the Rebels, as have Reno's Jake McGee and Carson's Willie Bowman.

"We believe those are the three best players in the state," said Gouldsmith, the first-year Rebels coach who has continued building the recruiting fence around Las Vegas that predecessors Rod Soesbe and Jim Schlossnagle started, but left unfinished.

As Las Vegas has continued to grow like Lew Alcindor in junior high, its baseball talent pool has gotten deeper. It was only a year ago that the Community College of Southern Nevada captured the national junior college title with a roster made up almost solely of local players.

Still, it has been only recently that UNLV started to notice. Nielsen, for instance, had to walk-on under Soesbe, who was fired after the 2001 season.

"If you took the nine best guys in Las Vegas and put them against the best guys from Arizona or California, they would hold their own," Nielsen said.

But would they beat them? Maybe, in a short series. Over a long season, unless you worked in the Tigers' front office, you'd probably take the kids from California.

That's why if Gouldsmith is going to succeed in taking the Rebels to the so-called next level, the local kids are going to need some help from outside the state.

"Nobody could do that, with the exception of Texas, Southern California and possibly Florida, but they go out of state, too," Gouldsmith said. "There's a luxury there, with the population being what it is, the level of amateur baseball being what it is, that they can do that.

"But without question, we're going to continue to recruit the best local kids, as long as they fill a need that we have."

So don't be surprised to one day see Gouldsmith walk to the pitcher's mound wearing ruby red baseball spikes.

As far as he's concerned, when it comes to recruiting players, there's no place like home.