Tigerville to Title – North Greenville Baseball Takes Unique Approach to Climb Mountain to First National Championship

This is the continuation of a series of Body, Mind & Soul stories that highlights member student-athletes, coaches and administrators of Conference Carolinas.

TIGERVILLE, S.C. - When it comes to baseball, Landon Powell has pretty much experienced all the game has to offer.

As a high school catcher, Powell propelled his team to the 2000 4A State Championship in North Carolina. At the University of South Carolina, he was named a two-time All-American, led the Gamecocks to the College World Series three straight seasons and was later named to the NCAA World Series Legends Team.

In 2004, Landon was selected in the first round of the MLB Draft by the Oakland Athletics. He played three years with the A’s in the big leagues, with his crowning moment coming on Mother’s Day in 2010 when he caught Dallas Braden’s perfect game at the Oakland Coliseum.

Little did he know that 12 years later he would be coaching baseball for a small Christian college in Tigerville, S.C. (population: 1,312) and yet another career milestone was just around the corner.

After steering North Greenville University to a 41-8 regular season record and the Conference Carolinas Tournament championship, Powell piloted the Crusaders through a magical postseason ride that saw them win 13 of 15 games en route to the school’s first-ever NCAA Division II baseball championship.

Powell, who recently was named the 2022 NCAA Division II National Coach of the Year, compares this collegiate season favorably to any of his personal accolades as a player.

“It definitely ranks on that leaderboard,” said the North Greenville coach. “It’s different because I’m a coach now, not a player. But it’s on my personal Mt. Rushmore. It’s just so rewarding because you spend more time on all aspects of the game. You recruited everyone, so we’re intertwined and it’s an incredible experience.”

Powell also thinks the smallness of the university–its enrollment is less than 2,000 students–and tiny population of Tigerville even makes his team’s accomplishment that much more special.

“This is a small bible college in the mountains of South Carolina,” he said. “The town post office is a 20-by-20 building. There are no traffic lights. We overcame so much. We took over the program when the team finished 8-35 the previous season. Our baseball facility was not what we needed. We had no lights and my entire budget was $12,000. In eight seasons, we have turned it around. We’ve raised a lot of money to improve the facilities ($2 to $3 million in renovations), and now we’re national champions. It makes it more special because of the mountain we’ve climbed.”

While the Crusaders earned a No. 1 national ranking for much of the 2022 season, they faced many Division II juggernauts with much bigger enrollments and more resources in the NCAA playoffs.

“While we play in a conference of similar schools, you’re apt to face opponents with larger budgets and more scholarships,” said Powell, who boasts an almost unworldly career record of 300-105-1 in eight seasons at NGU. “Colleges like West Chester and Angelo State have enrollments of 10,000 and offer the Division II limit of nine scholarships. We have only six scholarships and have to divide that up among 40 guys.”

The Crusaders’ coach said he actually uses that underdog mentality as a positive in his recruiting, however.

“I tell them they’ll be going into a gunfight with a knife, but we’ll still win. I like to recruit players with a chip on their shoulder. We want to use that as an advantage.”

Known all year for their resilience and comeback ability, North Greenville was severely tested when it lost three-time All-American catcher John Michael Faile in the first game of the conference tournament on May 5 against King.

“In the very first inning of our first game, he tore up his knee rounding first base on a single,” Powell said. “It was just devastating. He was our team captain and leader. Lots of teams would have folded, but it seemed to motivate them. We took off and won four in a row for the championship.”

Yet, it was still a big blow to the team’s chances of reaching their ultimate goal: winning the school’s first national crown. Faile, a redshirt junior from Boiling Springs, South Carolina, annihilated college pitching all season long to lead the Crusaders with an eye-popping and league-leading .418 batting average. He also ranked sixth nationally with 84 RBIs in only 54 games.

“I felt something pop in my knee,” Faile said. “Everything was racing in my mind. When I got back to the dugout, the trainer told me it looks like I’ve torn it. The next day I got an MRI which confirmed I had a Bucket Handle Meniscus tear, which is the worst tear you can have.”

Faile said he was given several options on how to repair his knee, which also had suffered a partial ACL tear. While he chose the option with the shortest recovery time of six weeks, it was assumed that his 2022 season was over.

Ever the competitor and team leader, Faile simply would not accept the prognosis. From the day he injured his knee, he repeatedly told his coach that he would be ready if the team reached the NCAA Division II Baseball Championship.

After the surgery, the 6-foot-1, 220-pound catcher was given crutches to walk out of the hospital.  

“When I got to my car, I put the crutches in the trunk and never used them again,” he said with a chuckle. “I texted coach and said I’ll be ready by the World Series. Maybe I was crazy but I was going to play.”

He went to therapy the day after his surgery and continued to rehab six days a week.

 “When I got hurt, I felt like I had let the team down, so if there was any possibility of returning I was going to do everything in my power to do it.”

In his absence, a talent-laden North Greenville club raced through the Conference Carolinas Tournament, outsourcing opponents by a combined score of 44-19 in four straight wins. They continued their dominance in the NCAA Southeast Regionals, capturing the title in a 13-3 romp over Lenoir-Rhyne in the regional championship game.  

Then still without Faile, Powell’s squad won two of three in the NCAA Southeast Super Regionals against Columbus State, again hanging a 13-3 exclamation point in the final contest.

With every game producing a new hero, the Crusaders featured multiple individual stars throughout the postseason. Collectively, North Greenville ranked fourth nationally in runs scored (604) while posting the seventh-best ERA (3.59) in NCAA Division II, led by Conference Carolinas Male Athlete of the Year Reece Fields, who registered an 11-2 mark and a 3.79 ERA this past season. Their potent hitting lineup also ranked in the top-20 in both batting average (.331) and home runs (94).  

Two of the more interesting cogs in the machine were outfielder-first baseman Marek Chlup and second baseman Gehrig Octavio.

Chlup, who earned Conference Carolinas Player of the Year and All-America honors after hitting .390 with 20 doubles, 12 home runs and 75 RBIs, took his own unique path to college stardom. A native of Cesky Dub, Czech Republic, Chlup was taught the sport by his baseball-crazed father Vladimir at a very early age.   

“My father played tennis and hockey growing up, but when he was 18 he went to the theater to see The Natural. He loved it so much he saw it five days in a row! He started his own team at school and learned the rules by watching the movie.”

And like Roy Hobbs, played by Robert Redford in the 1984 film, Vladimir even made his own bat.  

“He didn’t put a lightning bolt on it, though,” laughed his son.

The elder Chlup moved to the United States briefly in the 1990’s, living in Colorado while playing in amateur leagues and rooting for his adopted Major League team, the Rockies.

He has since returned to the Czech Republic, where he currently coaches in a semi-pro league while also serving as the groundskeeper at the local baseball facility.

“We still text every day,” said Marek. “There’s a six-hour time difference but he’ll watch my games online at 3 a.m. his time. I still ask him for advice because nobody knows me better than my father.”

Chlup, who used to travel with his dad to baseball tournaments across the Czech Republic and serve as a bat boy growing up, began to play in the national program at the age of 11. He also played on the MLB-sponsored Europe Team which toured both Arizona and Florida.

He continued to tour the U.S. when he was 17 years old. While playing games in North Carolina against college teams such as Charlotte, Duke and North Carolina State in 2016, Marek’s national team coach, Canadian Mike Griffin, introduced him to the NC State coach, who agreed to place him on the Wolfpack’s roster the following season.

A lack of playing time at the Atlantic Coast Conference school prompted the young Czech to transfer to nearby North Greenville, where he has blossomed into a bona fide Major League prospect.

Eventually, he would like to return to his homeland to help grow baseball as a national sport.

“Most people still don’t even know the rules,” he said. “They ask me if I’m one of the guys with the bats or the ones that catch the ball. I have to explain that you do both! We still don’t have nice baseball fields. We play on soccer fields mostly. There still may be only about 3,000 people who play baseball in the entire country. But it’s exciting to think I might be able to help grow the sport there.”

Another remarkable story about a player far away from home was Octavio, a 5-foot-7, 160-pound leadoff hitter whose irrepressible spirit defined this year’s champions. The Hilo, Hawaii native paced the conference in walks with 53, ranked second in runs scored with 77 while garnering a .338 batting average, .472 on-base percentage and stealing 21 bases.

But his baseball exploits took a backseat to a family tragedy that shook his world in 2021. His older sister, Cheylee (26), was brutally stabbed seven times in the back and leg by a former boyfriend that left her fighting for her life in a Hilo hospital.

“I got the news while I was playing summer ball in Spartanburg (South Carolina),” he recalled. “After one of our games, I was told there had been an emergency back home. When my mom told me, I had such a hopeless feeling being 5,000 miles away.”

Some of his Crusaders’ teammates drove to Spartanburg and brought him back to campus that same day. He then took the first flight back to Hilo the next day. When he arrived, his sister was still in the ICU unit where she stayed for four days. She remained in critical condition for more than a week before being discharged after nine days.

In the meantime, Cheylee’s former boyfriend had met bail and was released. For both support and protection, Gehrig spent every single night with her in the hospital.

“I was fortunate to pull some strings because this was still during COVID,” he added.

Gehrig, who was named after Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig because “my dad was a die-hard Yankee fan,” elected to spend the rest of the summer in Hawaii to help his sister, who spent two months in a wheelchair, to rehab and recover. He even asked the NGU administration to allow him to arrive on campus late and extend his stay. They were happy to accommodate his needs.

With his father, Luke, a production manager for the local Mauna Loa macadamia nut factory, and mother, Cheryl, a non-profit grant administrator, Gehrig was able to help Cheylee towards a full recovery. She now works at a Hilo homeless shelter.

The emotions were stoked again, however, when Octavio and the Crusaders approached the first pitch of the NCAA Division II Baseball Championship final in Cary, North Carolina. Beyond the natural excitement and anxiety, the June 10 title game against Point Loma Nazarene University (San Diego, California) held added significance for the Hawaiian.  

For Gehrig, it marked the exact one-year anniversary of his sister’s domestic violence nightmare. To mark the occasion, he wore purple wristbands and was comforted to see both of his parents in the grandstand.

“The whole day was really surreal for me,” he said. “It was a moment every college athlete dreams of. Yet my thoughts were with my sister back home. After what happened to Cheylee, my parents and I wanted to have a voice and began to reach out to people. We wanted them to know you are not alone and that domestic violence touches everybody. We’re stronger together.”

Octavio went 1-for-4 with a run scored in the championship game, won by the Crusaders, 5-3. And as joyous as the celebration was after clinching the trophy, it was nothing in comparison to the postgame phone call he made to his sister.

“They had a potluck party at a local park with a lot of our family. When she got on the phone, I just cried and said, ‘we did it!’ I know she was proud of me. It was just overwhelming.”

It felt a little overwhelming for Faile at the College World Series, too, particularly in the NCAA Division II Baseball Championship opener against West Chester on June 5. Only 16 days after his knee surgery, his name was penciled into the lineup by Coach Powell at the uncustomary sixth spot as the designated hitter.

“I started hitting in the cage the day after the Super Regional, which was less than a week before the World Series,'' said Faile. “I didn’t know for sure I was going to start until the day before game one. Between it being my first College World Series and not knowing how my knee might respond, I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before.”

Fortunately, Faile, and his teammates didn’t have to wait long. His first at-bat was one for the ages. Admitting that he “was very nervous walking up to the plate,” he took the first pitch for a ball. Then he swung hard and fouled off the second pitch.  

Then West Chester’s 235-pound southpaw Braeden Fausnaught uncorked a fastball right down the middle of the plate.

“When I hit it, a huge weight lifted off my shoulder,” is how he explained. “I was just happy to make solid contact. Then all of the sudden, the center fielder stopped at the wall and the ball just kept sailing.”

Improbable as it was, Faile became the reincarnation of Kirk Gibson limping to the plate and hitting a historic home run in the 1988 World Series for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the Oakland Athletics.

“To see my teammates coming out of the dugout, to hug everybody, including Landon, it was just something I’ll never forget,” he said.

Still favoring his repaired knee, Faile remarkably batted .477 (7-for-15) with one homer and five RBIs in the four NCAA Division II Baseball Championship games.  

When Octavio thinks about Faile’s performance, he still shakes his head.

“That dude is unbelievable,” said the Crusaders’ second baseman. “He’s one of the greatest hitters I have ever played with. That first at-bat in the opener was the most special thing I have ever witnessed in a game. I can’t wait to see him at the next level.”

Faile has one more year of college eligibility but professional scouts took notice of his heroic efforts at the NCAA Division II Baseball Championship.

“I really don’t know what I’m going to do,” he admitted. “My dream as a kid was always to play professional baseball. If I get drafted and have that opportunity, I would be thrilled. But if it doesn’t happen, I love North Greenville University and would be happy to come back.”

One of the great advantages for Faile is he has a personal catching instructor in his head coach, a former Major League receiver.

“He’s taught me so much,” John Michael gushed. “One of my goals in college was to become a better defensive catcher and he taught me new routines and techniques. When he would call the pitches my first two years, I would ask him, ‘why did you call this pitch in this situation?”

As Faile continued to digest the information, Powell eventually relinquished and allowed the junior catcher to call the pitches.

“I begged him and he finally let me for most games,” he said with a smile. “But when he knows more about a certain team, he will still call the game. He kids with me all the time, saying ‘you know, I did call a perfect game in the big leagues!'"

Faile is continuing to rehab his knee as he awaits his fate at the MLB Draft this month. As for his unused crutches?

“I think they're still in my trunk.”

Bob Rose is a longtime sports public relations executive who has worked for the San Francisco Giants, Oakland Athletics, the NFL Cardinals, Cal, Stanford and other organizations. Bob works with Assistant Commissioner for External Relations Brian Hand and the entire Conference Carolinas office to help tell the stories of the tremendous student-athletes, coaches and administrators in Conference Carolinas. Photos in this story are by Robby Gawrys, Hand and Alyson Boyer Rode.