June 19, 2015
By Jerome Boettcher
OMAHA, Neb. — For the Snider family, the party will start hours before first pitch in a motor home in a neighboring state.
Zander Wiel will arrive at TD Ameritrade Park for Friday night’s College World Series matchup against TCU and do what he always does before a game — locate Connie Wiel.
And when Walker Buehler steps onto the mound to make his first start in 18 days, he knows his mother will be living and dying with his every pitch.
These are just three Vanderbilt baseball teammates who are extremely grateful for the support they receive from their families — whether at a regular-season game back at Hawkins Field in Nashville or on college baseball’s biggest stage.
“It is awesome. You try to share the experiences with them because they’ve invested in it, too,” Buehler said after practice at Creighton University on Thursday night. “Every thing we go through they go through. I think it is fun for them.”
While Wiel and Buehler both were in Omaha last year, this is freshman pitcher Collin Snider’s first trip to the College World Series. And his family wasn’t about to miss any second of the experience.
So his parents, Jerry and Cheri, along with his three younger brothers, Spencer, Andrew and Zachary, and his girlfriend, Rachel, crammed into his family’s RV and made the 770-mile trip from Murfreesboro, Tenn.
After splitting the long trek up over two days, they set up camp last Thursday just across the Missouri River in Council Bluffs, Iowa in the Harrah’s Casino parking lot. The roomy RV has a bed and two sleeper sofas, but for this trip the Snider family has also had to inflate two air mattresses.
“They packed six people in there right now. It is probably pretty cozy,” Collin said laughing.
And more family and friends might be jamming into the RV if the Commodores keep winning. Right now, the Snider home on wheels serves as party headquarters for many Vanderbilt baseball families. Equipped with two large TVs and a brand new radio, the RV has been a perfect place to tailgate before and after games.
The Sniders bought the RV partially for the purpose of being able to travel around and see Collin pitch. In fact, Collin says he doesn’t think it hasn’t been used for anything except baseball road trips yet.
They took the RV to the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala., last month, and then spent a long weekend in Champaign, Ill., two weeks ago for the Super Regional. After briefly returning home to Murfreesboro, they turned right back around last Wednesday morning and started the journey to Omaha.
“It is pretty cool having them here every day and being able to see them a lot more and go out to dinner,” Collin said. “So it is really cool. Having them here for every game just feels like home.”
For Zander Wiel, also a native of Murfreesboro, he never feels far from home because of his biggest fan — his mother, Connie Wiel.
“Since I was six or seven, I can probably count the number of games she has missed on my hands,” Zander said. “She has been there all the time. She is my biggest supporter. I don’t know what I’d do without her.”
By the end of the College World Series, Zander’s father, Randy Wiel, hopes to be right there next to his wife. Randy is currently in Chapel Hill working at the University of North Carolina basketball camp.
Some of Zander’s earliest memories of his father were sitting on his lap during press conferences when he was the head coach of Middle Tennessee State. But Randy, who played basketball at UNC under Dean Smith, wasn’t able to make it to his son’s high school baseball games. Up until the last couple years, he spent much of the past decade oceans away coaching professional basketball in the Netherlands.
With his father usually out of the country for half of the year, Zander knew he could count on his mom for support.
“She really had a lot on her plate, and she absolutely stepped up to the plate and delivered for me every time,” he said. “I just can’t say enough about her. She is really the biggest influence in my life. She is a special woman.”
Zander will look up from first base on Friday night and quickly find his mom in the stands. Then he’ll settle in and block out all the background noise. But occasionally, he’ll still hear some familiar yells.
“She’s pretty vocal,” he said with a laugh. “I would definitely say in high school there has been some times where I could certainly hear her, point her out in the stands and hear she was letting an umpire have it or yelling something. I still hear her from time to time. She is a vocal fan. She let’s people know she is there.”
And that means the world to Zander.
“Having my mom here, it is something that I am so used to,” he said. “I know she is going to be there for me no matter what stage I’m playing on.”
Last year, in the NCAA Tournament, ESPN’s cameras locked in on Karen Buehler. Sitting in the first row above the Commodores’ dugout, Karen wore her emotions on her sleeve as her son pitched at Hawkins Field. She screamed. She cheered. She cried tears of joy.
For Walker, it was nothing out of the ordinary.
“She has always kind have been like that,” he said, laughing. “I think she gets more nervous than anything because… she thinks every pitch is the game winner.” Walker will have plenty of supporters on hand Friday night.
His mom, his maternal grandmother and his younger sister and younger brother, along with his father, Tony, his stepmom and Walker’s girlfriend all made the trip from various directions. His mom had a 12-hour drive from Lexington, while his dad lives eight hours from Omaha in Denver.
A trial lawyer back in Lexington, Karen set her schedule so she never missed one of Walker’s starts at Vanderbilt.
For Walker, a first-round draft choice by the Los Angeles Dodgers, that diehard support from all of his family has become the norm.
“I don’t know if I could do it any other way. That’s the way I’ve known and grown up. My grandparents on my mom’s side have been really close to me growing up. They lived really close so they were there at every game, too. That’s just kind of how it has always been. They were all here last year and this year and it is cool to have everybody around.”