INTO THE GAP: Stillman College Perseveres Despite Challenges Facing HBCU Baseball

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Terrance Whittle is a man of many hats, one being a fitted blue Stillman College baseball cap.

He is also a mentor, advisor, disciplinarian, travel coordinator, administrator, recruiter, friend and father of three children.

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While Whittle has been the Stillman Tigers head baseball coach since 2018, he also pulls the rare double-duty of being the athletic director since last August for the historically-Black college — also referred to as an HBCU.

On Saturday, Whittle did more observing than talking during a three-and-a-half-hour intersquad scrimmage at Tiger Field, standing where the coach's box would normally be adjacent to third base. On this day, though, there was no spray-paint outline of a box for the coach, no white chalk on the field and no bleachers beyond the backstop. The practice balls were stained an orangish-brown from the dirt and players wore mismatched practice uniforms on a cold February Saturday.

But apart from the echoing taunts and cheers of players coming in both English and Spanish, the only other sounds were the occasional hiss and subsequent pop of a nail gun from the roof of the Tiger Field press box. The college is currently in the process of some noticeable improvements ahead of the start of its 2022 season on Tuesday, which will also include new seating for spectators under the field's metal awning behind home plate.

Tucked away at the bottom of a steep hill in Tuscaloosa's predominantly-Black West End, Tiger Field can be found in the shadow of a defunct football stadium that has not seen a college team take the field since 2015. Built in 1999, the 9,000-seat football stadium sits in silence — a lonely reminder of how costly athletics can be for the myriad schools without hundreds of millions of dollars in booster funding.

According to the most recent data, Stillman College's endowment is valued at approximately $25 million. Conversely, a little more than three miles away within the same city limits, the University of Alabama System this week announced plans to move forward on the construction of a $183 million arena for its basketball and gymnastics programs.

The two Tuscaloosa institutions compete on polar opposite ends of the spectrum in college sports, but the comparison underscores the widening gulf separating the haves and have nots.

While top-tier SEC athletes just recently secured the right to benefit financially from their names, images and likenesses, NAIA baseball programs have much less to work with in terms of financial resources for student-athletes. Many of the athletes at this level flew under the radar through high school or otherwise didn't attract the interest of bigger schools, yet still had the desire to stick with the game.

And to make matters more difficult from a financial standpoint, Stillman College is also a private institution, thus on the receiving end of even less external aid. But the genuine desire by athletes to continue their athletic careers by any means remains the primary driver responsible for filling out rosters at Stillman and for its peers.

"As with all HBCUs, support across the board from a financial point of view is our biggest challenge," Whittle told Patch in an interview on Saturday. "Then you have the infrastructure standpoint and facilities and, as you can see, we're doing some cosmetic changes here at this institution for our baseball program. But across the board, every HBCU is in the same position. When it comes to baseball, baseball tends to be a bottom-feeder when it comes to the kind of support they need, not just from the institutions but the community at large."

As part of Black History Month in February, which coincides with the start of the 2022 baseball season for the Stillman Tigers, Patch took a closer look at the program to get a better understanding of the challenges and points of pride for the Stillman baseball program and other HBCUs across the country.

INTO THE GAP

The 2022 Stillman Tigers baseball team is a diverse one, with local players from familiar places like Tuscaloosa and Demopolis, along with a boisterous cast of talented players from baseball-obsessed countries outside of the U.S.

During Saturday's scrimmage, jovial shouts in Spanish brought even more life and color to a sunny day at the ballpark. Indeed, three players on the roster are from Santa Domingo in the Dominican Republic — a small country that produces arguably the best baseball talent in the world. Names like David Ortiz, Sammy Sosa, Pedro Martinez, Albert Pujols and the list goes on and on and on.

The Tigers are also not without a little bit of name recognition in left fielder Kelvin Reese, who earned MVP honors as a freshman in the 2021 HBCU All-Star Game held last June at the Hoover Met. In the showcase game, he logged a two-RBI double to give his team the lead on its way to a 3-1 victory.

"He will be a three-hole hitter and we have guys in front of him who can get on base," Whittle said of Reese on Saturday. "They are patient and can go deep into the count. To have him in that spot will be huge for us to have that RBI."

The talents of Reese and others — including Whittle's son Bilal, who roams the outfield along with Reese — will definitely be needed for a Tigers program facing one of the toughest conference slates in the NAIA after only winning a meagre 23 games over the last three seasons.

"I think the competition is there, the energy is there," Whittle said of his team heading into the opener. "I think we're still a little bit further away than I'd like to be on defense. We have some young kids that still have a ways to go. But we compete on the mound and compete at the plate, and the energy is there, but we really have to do a much better job of being consistent and we open with a really good team on Tuesday."

The Tigers on Tuesday will kick off the 2022 season in New Orleans against Xavier University of Louisiana. In 2021, The Gold Rush finished runner-up in the Black College World Series at Riverwalk Stadium in Montgomery after posting a 27-11 overall record.

This represented the culmination of the school's first year fielding a baseball program.

It's worth pointing out that Xavier University of Louisiana — founded by a literal Catholic saint — represents an anomalous HBCU baseball program that has substantial financial backing when compared to its peers. The private school touts an endowment in excess of $170 million, making it the fourth-wealthiest college or university in the state of Louisiana.

Despite the excitement ahead of the 2022 campaign, the Tigers will have their work cut out for them following a disappointing 3-25 season, where they were outscored by opponents 260-133 and shut out five times.

While scheduled to play more than 20 non-conference games against HBCUs at the NAIA, NCAA DI and DII levels, the Tigers' Southern States Athletic Conference (SSAC) schedule will also represent a tall order by itself. Just in SSAC play, Stillman will face No. 6 Faulkner, No. 12 Loyola New Orleans, No. 19 Middle Georgia and William Carey University — the first school receiving votes to be ranked outside of the top 25 in the preseason.

"Our mental aspect is going to be huge, especially when it comes to how well we respond to certain circumstances and situations that aren't pluses for us and to be able to bounce back from that," Whittle said.

The coach's words came moments after a screamer of a ground ball bounced off the foot of his pitcher, flying 15 or 20 feet into the air, before being corralled cleanly by the second baseman, who secured the easy put-out at first base. Thankfully, the pitcher was able to walk it off and seemed no worse for the wear.

Following a busy Saturday afternoon tune-up full of seesaw emotions, mental hiccups and frigid temperatures, the moment represented a strong one to end the day on that Whittle pointed to as an example of the progression in mental toughness and maturity seen in his players.

"A lot of times those things are going to happen," he said. "Both of those are young kids, and when a play happens like that and breaks down halfway through, you lose focus. They were able to focus and make the play and finish the play ... finishing is what we've been talking about."

OPTIMISM & UNCERTAINTY

Few would disagree with the argument that NFL Hall-of-Famer and former MLB outfielder Deion Sanders, with his recent success as head football coach of Jackson State University in Mississippi, has done more to raise the visibility of HBCU sports than any other coach since Grambling's Eddie Robinson.

The exposure has no-doubt been welcome among HBCUs that previously struggled to recruit top-tier athletes on the gridiron or garner TV time, but football remains far and away the most popular college sport. Followed to some degree by basketball, college football's popularity nationwide is unmatched. It's also one that requires substantial funding to put a successful product on the field.

And while "Coach Prime" and former NFL running back and Tennessee State football coach Eddie George have been major boons for HBCU football at its highest levels, smaller schools like Stillman continue to weather financial uncertainty that has been compounded by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It's not to say the college isn't doing what it can on all fronts, but for a private school with a little less than 1,000 students, funding can be hard to come by when times get tough in the surrounding world.

Other schools are also feeling the pinch and being forced to make cuts to programs like baseball, including just last year by North Carolina Central University — an HBCU in Durham that has an endowment of approximately $54 million.

It would ultimately be finances in 2015 that saw Stillman discontinue the majority of its sports programs — including baseball and football. At the time, then-Stillman President Peter Millet lamented the financial burden of athletics that do not generate profitable revenues, citing certain schools that were forced to close for good after their financial situations became terminal.

However, the decision was swiftly reversed, thanks in-part to the efforts of then-head baseball coach Julius McDougal, with the Tigers opting to compete on the baseball diamond as an NAIA school in 2016.

Since the transition to NAIA, however, the Tigers have yet to log a winning season, after more than a decade of success under coach Donny Crawford. Over 11 seasons, Crawford finished with a winning percentage over .500 and won seven Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference titles before resigning in 2015 on the eve of the program's major transition.

But the culture around the current state of the program is what Terrance Whittle hopes to change.

Prior to his move to Tuscaloosa, the Virginia native and Virginia State alum spent 16 seasons as head coach at Elizabeth City State University — an HBCU in North Carolina.

As Patch previously reported, he also served as envoy coach for Major League Baseball International from 2002-2010, helping scout South Africa’s first World Baseball Classic and Olympics participant team, in addition to working as a technical advisor to the Nigerian national team during the All-Africa games.

Whittle also isn't a stranger to the hardships facing HBCU baseball programs with their own individual sets of financial challenges and tangible needs. As a matter of fact, his tenure ended at Elizabeth City when the program was discontinued due to budget cuts.

For many HBCUs, he said, it all boils down to community support. But when considering the role played by these universities and colleges in academia, the historic lack of funding becomes all the more worrisome.

The United Negro College Fund, for example, has published data showing that HBCUs make up roughly 3% of the nation's higher education institutions, but enroll 10% of all Black students in the country and generate approximately 20% of all Black graduates.

The African American educational advocacy group also reports that more than 70% of HBCU students are eligible for federal Pell Grants, which indicates "significant financial need."

"The colleges are underinvested in, like many African Americans and their communities are underinvested in," Lodriguez Murray, the UNCF's senior vice president of public policy and government affairs, told U.S. News & World Report last September. "Originally they enrolled the progeny of slaves. They tend to enroll in modern times, still, a majority of first-generation college students and students from underserved backgrounds."

Whittle echoed the sentiment, saying a large number of athletes in programs like Stillman come from impoverished communities and broken homes — many just needing a chance to gain the confidence to develop as an athlete, student and member of society. These are the players hungry for a chance to make it to the next level and who have no other opportunity than to take arguably the most difficult route to do so.

"It takes a concerted effort of those who see the disparities," he said. "People have their own definitions of what disparities are and where they lie, but if you really want to be inclusive and address issues of diversity and inclusivity and equity, we have to look at it from a sports angle as well. When it comes to not just public institutions, but private institutions, there is a lot of disparities — and not just when looking at men's and women's sports."

College baseball is what Whittle and many others view as a "non-revenue sport," referring to the expectedly-low fan attendance and lack of merchandising revenue enjoyed by bigger schools with more money to spend on facilities and amenities.

"There's a big gap between what it costs baseball to do and sponsor and then the gap in terms of the rewards, benefits and revenue that comes from non-revenue sports like baseball," he said. "That's still a million-dollar question as to what causes that."

Whittle also said community interest is vital for the survival and local success of HBCU baseball. He stopped short of revealing Stillman's operating budget for its baseball program, but figures for comparable HBCU and NAIA baseball programs fall well below $100,000 a year.

"There's not a lot of interest outside of the baseball community to offer support for HBCU baseball," he explained. "So, now, the biggest push is for us to maintain, provide access and the opportunity for these players to continue to play, particularly those who come from disadvantaged communities, underserved communities, underserved schools and the Black and Latino communities."

Looking ahead, though, the current climate isn't without cause for optimism for the Stillman Colleges of the world, as more help from the baseball world will bring added benefits to a state that has produced such great Black baseball players as Hank Aaron and Willie Mays.

On Monday, Black College Championships LLC will hold a press conference in Montgomery to formally announce that the 2022 Black College World Series will be played in Montgomery in May.

The showcase will feature two divisions — one made up of NCAA Division II teams and another consisting of NAIA teams. Division winners will then meet in a one-game playoff to determine a champion.

While Major League Baseball and Black College Championships LLC are to thank for the latest boon to HBCU baseball, Whittle expressed his hope that businesses, alumni and other heavy-hitters in the Tuscaloosa community will see the positives that could come out of increased support and involvement.

"Fundraising is huge, as we try to grow the brand we've put in place, we want to make sure the community understands what that brand is, what that brand is about and how they can partner with us to move the brand forward ... that, in turn, will trickle down to our baseball program."

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