Lucas: To Omaha

By Adam Lucas

Twenty years ago this Wednesday, Chad Flack sent Carolina to Omaha.

It is the all-time highlight of Carolina baseball. Flack's home run was the moment Carolina baseball went from a program that always seemed to have potential to a program that produced results.

You want success? After Sunday's pulsating 4-3 walk-off win over Southern Cal, the Diamond Heels have now made nine Omaha trips in the last 21 seasons. This is an age of parity. There are 24 different slots in the College World Series over the last three years. North Carolina is the only program to get there twice.

The way they did it Sunday was extraordinary. Andrew Johnson was terrific on the mound for the Trojans, but Macon Winslow finally cracked the code in the eighth and smoked an RBI double off the base of the wall. That opened the door to the Southern Call bullpen, and the game was never the same.

Owen Hull was the hero, of course. You need players like him, guys who come up with the big hit at exactly the right time. But Carolina has been at this stage of the season enough to know that you also need players like Cooper Nicholson.

He may have had Sunday's biggest at-bat. This isn't some slap hitter. He leads the Heels in home runs this year, but had been mired in a horrible slump during the super regional. The second inning double play he hit into felt like it set the tone for the Carolina offense for much of the rest of the sweltering afternoon.

But then came the ninth inning, and Nicholson basically decided reliever Adam Troy wasn't going to get him out. This was around the same time the Boshamer Stadium crowd had decided they weren't going to let the Tar Heels lose. They'd unnerved Troy during his warmup tosses by roaring after every toss that bounced in the dirt, and he never appeared to get his command back.

Troy got ahead of Nicholson 0-2 but then watched the West Des Moines native—less than two hours from Omaha—native foul off two more pitches and take four bad ones, one of the hardest-earned walks of the season and one of the most important.

Troy promptly fell behind Carter French 3-0 and was yanked for Chase Herrell. As a reminder, French came to Carolina purely for the academics and wasn't even planning to play baseball. But this is the Diamond Heels, so of course the big spot found him and he responded, ripping a single to right.

Then the stars did what stars do. But so did everyone else, which is what has always been Carolina baseball under Mike Fox and Scott Forbes. Not as flashy as some others. Still hunting for that first national title, yes (and one of only eight teams with a chance to win it this year). But always good enough and tough enough to compete with anybody.

The program brings in good kids and gives them three or four years (or, these days, one or two) of an experience that stays with them forever. That's why in addition to Gavin Gallaher and Jake Schaffner and their teammates wearing their new 2026 College World Series hats on the field in the postgame celebration, there was also Tyler Trice and Ryan Graepel and Rob Wooten and Jake Knapp and Flack milling around and exchanging high fives. Those are players who have been there before and have a much better understanding now of what an indelible life experience this is about to be than they ever did when they were the ones wearing the uniforms.

Down there on the field, watching them celebrate the program's first walk-off super regional win since Skye Bolt's single against South Carolina in 2013, you realized something. Earning a spot in the College World Series has become enormous. College baseball is not the niche sport it was in 2006 when Flack blasted his homer to right field.

But here is what makes Carolina baseball so much fun. Sunday evening was a reminder that at the same time the sport has gotten much bigger, they have kept it small. Joe Bray is still taking pictures. Bruce and Peggy Freniere are still at the games cheering for the boys. The players, even the ones who just arrived on campus, still seem like Tar Heels. Forbes constantly talks about his staff of Scott Jackson, Bryant Gaines, Jesse Wierzbicki, Jason Howell and Carter Hicks, and if Forbes was here right now he'd probably say don't forget Kyle Datres and Brandon Martorano either, and hey, what about Terri Jo and Dave and Coach Gatz and Daniel in the equipment room and Kate in the office and please mention Jeff and Drew and the boys taking care of the field and…

You get the idea.

They have earned the right to be as big-time as they want to be. And they don't act like it for even a second. Down on the field, there were moms and dads in tears and Lee Sowers was apologizing to his friends and family by saying, "Sorry I'm wet, I dumped water on the coach." In the corner of the home dugout sat Harvey Forbes, the very proud father of Carolina's head coach. He received a compliment on his Carolina polo shirt with a conspiratorial grin. "I have to tell you something," he said. "I wore this same shirt yesterday. And we won, so I took it home and ran it through the washer because it needed to be ready to go again today."

Mr. Forbes, you don't have to explain for another moment because you are among friends. I personally know two people who watched the final inning on the Boshamer concourse because they went there for the eighth, Carolina got a run, and they knew they had to stay. Just make sure that shirt is ready to go this weekend...and maybe unlock the concourse just in case.

Now, understand this, especially if you are new to this whole world of Carolina baseball in June: that is also what makes it so stressful. It is easy to like these people, and easy to cheer for them, and that makes it nearly unbearable when the hits aren't falling with runners in scoring position or that darn umpire is squeezing the strike zone.

As you're watching all the highlights from Sunday, listen to the crowd as Hull's ball flies toward center field. First they roar. Then they get very quiet. And then once it hits the ground, there is sheer jubilation. That's a full range of human emotion in just a couple seconds, and that's what Carolina baseball does to you at this time of year. "It's so much harder to watch," Knapp said in the aftermath, "than to play."

These are the best kind of celebrations because no one wants to leave. There is plenty of work to be done starting later Sunday night but in that moment there are just hugs and pictures. Eventually, families start leaving in groups, making plans with their sons to meet for dinner, where they will relive the entire game again.

Flack and his former teammates—and lifelong friends—were some of the last to leave. On Wednesday, it will be twenty years since his walk-off video and the accompanying Jones Angell call of, "Chad Flack just sent Carolina…to Omaha!" became a fundamental part of Tar Heel athletic lore.

It has been a great 20 years. But he's also ready to watch something new. "Hey," he told several of the current Tar Heels, including Hull, after the game. "Thanks for giving them a different video to play. It's your turn now."

Scoreboard Slider

University of North Carolina Athletics

Related News

Players Mentioned

Carter French

Gavin Gallaher

Owen Hull

Jake Knapp

Cooper Nicholson

Jake Schaffner

Lee Sowers

Macon Winslow

Related Videos