Jamie Womack – photo by Bob Broughton
Jamie Womack is the interim Head Coach of the Bushnell University
Beacons. He has been a part of Bushnell’s program since its
inception.
Bob Broughton,
PNWCBR: Why does Bushnell have
a baseball team? What’s the story behind getting the baseball
program started?
Jamie Womack:
There was, pre-COVID, three
pretty prominent people within town; the President of our university,
Ike Olsson, Kelly Richardson, some local business guys who are big
baseball fans, wanted to get more baseball in the area, we kind of
had a three-tier group we got together, Bushnell University, the
Springfield Drifters, which is a team in the West Coast League, and
the Springfield School District. Guys like Brett Yancey
[Springfield
School District Assistant Superintendent], who have been really
helpful in putting this whole project together, all three heads came
together, we built a beautiful facility that all three of us get to
utilize, and that’s a really good thing.
BB: It
helps that you’ve got a really good field to play on, so much so
that they had to move the conference tournament there.
The Bushnell program has had remarkable success for the four years
that you’ve had a team. What is the reason why you’ve done so
well?
JW: I
think there’s a lot of reasons. I think we got really lucky. Our
first recruiting class, we just got some special guys that have stuck
around. They’re seniors now. We dealt with the losses, learned how
to win, learned how to lose correctly, how to grow and learn from it.
We’ve been really blessed with a lot of support from our university
from top to bottom, and some really special people in the community
that wanted us to succeed and have been helpful throughout that
process.
BB: When
you’re trying to recruit a player, what’s your sales pitch? Why
would you want to play baseball at Bushnell?
JW: I
think there’s a lot of things. We try to get guys on campus, and
then we send them out with our players in practice, and that’s the
experience we want them to see. We feel like we’ve got a special
culture among our group. It’s something that’s not, yes, we want
to win baseball games, and we want to find success on the baseball
field, but we’re trying to grow young men and prepare them for the
rest of their lives, and use baseball as a tool to do that. That’s
an experience that I think, when people come to check us out, they’re
able to see among our group, and it’s an infectious thing. We try
to walk by faith, do it the right way, and that can be pretty
contagious once people are a part of that.
BB: As
far as academics go, what is Bushnell best known for?
JW: I think
we’re a pretty strong kinesiology school. Business school, and
we’ve got a pretty good teacher education program; secondary
education and elementary. Computer science is growing as well. So
we’ve got a lot of different things in our building, and nursing is
a newer one that’s taken off a little bit as well.
Bushnell official
site: https://bushnellbeacons.com/sports/baseball