USU baseball earns three NCBA all-decade team selections

On Sept. 10, The National Club Baseball Association announced its all-decade team, and three Aggies made the cut. Head coach Norm Doyle, Brad Singer at second base and Jake Anderson at first base all made the prestigious list. 

“I was totally shocked,” said Doyle. 

Doyle worked as an assistant coach from 2007-2011, and then head coach of the Aggies from 2012 to 2014. In that time, he won two NCBA World Series in just three seasons. 

“One of my players sent me a message and it was a copy of the announcement and I’m like wow, that is just huge,” Doyle said. “Then I noticed that two of my players were on there as well,  there were three of us from Utah State and that was more than any other university across the country.” 

But according to Doyle, it wasn’t long ago that winning was not a regular occurrence for the ballclub. 

“When I first started as an assistant, to be blunt, we were not very good,” he said.

So Coach Doyle and then head coach Bret Al-Imari got to work. 

“Bret and I built this over a period of time, we got more recognition, more people became aware that there was even a team out there, we got more funding and it just started to grow,” he said.

When Al-Imari left the squad after the 2011 season, Doyle took the reigns. By then they had built a talented team of 15 players — nine of which were from Cache Valley, including Sky View grad, Brad Singer. 

“It was a ‘Hey Hey Aggies All The Way’ mentality and these guys knew it and they knew they were good players,” Singer said.

After losing just one conference game the whole of the 2012 season and winning the region tournament for the first time in school history, the Aggies climbed to No. 15 nationally, and earned a bid into the eight-team world series tournament, which the team won in convincing fashion, despite doubts from outside opinions. 

“We were predicted to be the first team eliminated, but we went in there and won four straight games,” Doyle said. “After the final out the radio announcer yelled out ‘the slipper fits, Utah State University, Cinderella, the slipper fits!’ It was amazing.” 

The all-decade accolades are a testament to how great USU baseball was in the 2010s, when they won eight conference championships, the World Series in 2012 and 2014, and then made another World Series appearance in 2017.

The NCBA’s social media highlighted just how much of an achievement this was, which strengthened USU’s case as one of the best teams over the past decade.

🚨@RawlingsSports '10-'19 All Decade Team!🚨

On average each NCBA season brought 250+ teams & over 4,500 participants. Stretch that over a 10 year span & it’s truly a remarkable feat to be awarded such a honor.

Congrats to all those selected!

Full Post: https://t.co/htIegIPr5F

— NCBA (@The_NCBA) September 10, 2020

“On average each NCBA season brought 250+ teams & over 4,500 participants. Stretch that over a 10-year span & it’s truly a remarkable feat to be awarded such an honor.” 

Of those thousands of participants, just 13 players and one coach were selected to the all-decade team, which meant Utah State made up 21% of the list. 

“Oh man it’s an incredible feeling for sure,” said Anderson. “I’ve worked really hard while I was playing and to receive this award definitely means a lot to me.”

Anderson — a two-time All-American who played in 2014 and then 2016 and 2017 —  has since made the transition to current head coach of the team.

Singer played a major role in helping the Aggies win the title in 2012. He finished the year with a .403 batting average and a team-high 54 hits, earning himself first-team all-American honors. 

“Brad was an outstanding player of mine,” Doyle said. 

After losing in the region tournament in 2013, the Aggies returned to the World Series in 2014 and lifted the trophy for the second time in three years. 

“I had announced to the team before the season started that this was going to be my last year and I think that gave them a little extra push,” Doyle said. 

The 2014 squad that was so loaded, first-year player Jake Anderson didn’t even make the starting rotation. But despite that, he cherishes the championship and the chance to play for Coach Doyle. 

“That’s one of my favorite years. Even if you weren’t playing you felt like you were a part of the team,” Anderson said. “Norm did such a good job of making sure you knew exactly where you sat on the team. He did a great job of navigating young adults and really making sure that we knew what our role on the team was, and that we felt important.” 

Doyle admired Anderson’s attitude during that season.

“Jake was amazing. He never once complained about playing time that year. Never once. He knew his time would come,” he said.

And his time certainly came. After not playing in the 2015 season, he worked himself into peak baseball shape, playing in summer leagues and doing a lot of conditioning. According to him, he was prepared to be “the guy” in 2016. 

In 2016, he held a .481 batting average and a remarkable 1.000 slugging percentage, which helped him earn first-team All-American honors. But that’s not all. 

In a game against the eventual World Series champions Nevada, Peterson hit four home runs — a feat so rare, it has only been done by 17 MLB players. 

“It was one of those surreal moments…I was just like this is unbelievable, nobodies going to believe me. I’m going to call my dad after this and he’s not going to believe that it actually happened,” Anderson said.

In Anderson’s final two seasons playing for the Aggies, his head coach was, ironically enough, Brad Singer, who took over for Doyle in the fall of 2015. 

Singer and Anderson helped take the Aggies back to the World Series in 2017. 

“Brad had a young family and he took all the time out to be a coach and be a great coach,” Anderson said. “Although we didn’t win a world series that doesn’t diminish the amount of effect he had on the players.” 

All three recipients of the all-decade award have had a profound impact on the Utah State Club baseball team. And their dedication to the club is even more impressive knowing that all their time spent on the diamond has come out of their own pockets.  

“I volunteered 100% of my time, a lot of my own money, and the players had to pay their dues to be on the team,” Doyle said. 

“It’s so cool because you have all these players that really just love the game of baseball. They are willing to play with no scholarships.” Anderson said. 

Anderson thinks that that self-sacrifice has made it all the more gratifying to receive the all-decade reward.

“We pay to play and so to receive this all-decade reward, it meant so much to me.”

Doyle cherishes the time spent coaching the student-athletes — which included his own son Ryan from 2007 to 2011 — and credits them in helping him receive this reward. 

“I think they allowed me to be the recipient of the coach of the decade award. They’re the guys on the field, they’re the guys hitting balls scoring the runs. I was just there to help direct and organize and keep the machine moving in the right direction. All of the accolades that I got, those go back to the players. Without those players, I wouldn’t have received anything,” he said.

@jacobnielson12

— sports@usustatesman.com