Chase Solesky

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tpstulane
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Just some info from a baseball friend. Cutting scholarships is an NCAA violation. One reason why Alabama fired their coach.


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Profoundwizard
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tpstulane wrote:Cutting scholarships is an NCAA violation

Only an NCAA violation in power 5 conferences.
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https://www.tidesports.com/goff-tries-r ... caa-rules/
Under NCAA bylaw 15.3.4.1, schools can reduce or cancel scholarships in cases where an athlete “renders himself or herself ineligible,” or “fraudulently misrepresents any information” on scholarship and financial agreements,” or “engages in serious misconduct warranting substantial disciplinary penalty.”

Athletes can voluntarily give up their scholarships, but the institution must honor scholarship agreements. In January 2015, NCAA schools passed legislation that required Power 5 conference schools, including Alabama and other SEC schools, to renew scholarships annually regardless of athletic performance. Previously, most scholarships were subject to annual renewal. Schools outside the Power 5 such as Louisiana Tech, Goff’s previous stop, are not required to renew scholarships annually.
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tpstulane
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Profoundwizard wrote:https://www.tidesports.com/goff-tries-r ... caa-rules/
Under NCAA bylaw 15.3.4.1, schools can reduce or cancel scholarships in cases where an athlete “renders himself or herself ineligible,” or “fraudulently misrepresents any information” on scholarship and financial agreements,” or “engages in serious misconduct warranting substantial disciplinary penalty.”

Athletes can voluntarily give up their scholarships, but the institution must honor scholarship agreements. In January 2015, NCAA schools passed legislation that required Power 5 conference schools, including Alabama and other SEC schools, to renew scholarships annually regardless of athletic performance. Previously, most scholarships were subject to annual renewal. Schools outside the Power 5 such as Louisiana Tech, Goff’s previous stop, are not required to renew scholarships annually.
Ok. One reason it's good not to be P5. :)
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Firing of that Bama coach was a witch hunt. They were looking for an excuse and they got one In my oppinion. Maybe I'm misunderstanding but jewett didn't pull his scholly, he just lowered it? Too bad our school isn't wealthy enough to help with aid.
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tpstulane
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RollWaveRoll wrote:Firing of that Bama coach was a witch hunt. They were looking for an excuse and they got one In my oppinion. Maybe I'm misunderstanding but jewett didn't pull his scholly, he just lowered it? Too bad our school isn't wealthy enough to help with aid.
He was cut what he was promised.
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posse
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tpstulane wrote:
RollWaveRoll wrote:Firing of that Bama coach was a witch hunt. They were looking for an excuse and they got one In my oppinion. Maybe I'm misunderstanding but jewett didn't pull his scholly, he just lowered it? Too bad our school isn't wealthy enough to help with aid.
He was cut what he was promised.
tps, does this lack of financial support (stacking?) for baseball mean that Tulane is not fully vested in a winning athletic program?
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tpstulane
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posse wrote: tps, does this lack of financial support (stacking?) for baseball mean that Tulane is not fully vested in a winning athletic program?
Our coaches always seem to have to be able to compete on an unlevel playing field. But baseball is by far the most difficult to do so with only 11.7 scholarships available at our cost of tuition.
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posse
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tpstulane wrote: Our coaches always seem to have to be able to compete on an unlevel playing field. But baseball is by far the most difficult to do so with only 11.7 scholarships available at our cost of tuition.
What a shame.......The sad part is, no matter what AD takes over, it is the same BS, "We are taking steps to correct the problem and level the playing field",
but the same problems exist decade after decade.....Nothing really changes but AD's and Coaches.....and Tulane wonders why long time fans get discouraged and find a new interest........
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Chase is back on the roster
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tpstulane
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chain gang x man wrote:Chase is back on the roster
Great news! Unused Juco money freed up probably helped get Chase back.
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Good to hear.
BAYWAVE&Sophandros are SPINELESS COWARDS
YOU NEED LEVERAGE TO BE PROACTIVE!
Small time facilities for small time programs
6-4-23:Now all of the mistakes Tulane has made finally catches up with them as they descend to CUSAAC.
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Welcome back Chase. It's too bad Jewett has to financially negotiate with his players. Jones had done it for years. The NCAA is horrible. Title IX has wrecked baseball. 11.7 is not fair to these male student athletes. Embarrassing this stuff has to take place.
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Good article in Nola.com on Chase’s return this year after fighting a back injury a year ago


https://expo.nola.com/sports/g66l-2019/ ... areer.html
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https://expo.nola.com/sports/g66l-2019/ ... areer.html
It’s summertime and Chase Solesky has gone nearly a full year without being the best pitcher he can be — a full year of feeling like he let his teammates down. His confidence is gone. But he has a plan.
That plan put the Tulane pitcher back on the mound last Sunday against George Washington. He lasted into the sixth inning and came off the field having allowed four runs. More important than anything was the pain-free feeling in his lower back that had him thinking he could again be the dominant pitcher he once was.
“Last year was the hardest year of my life, by far,” Solesky said.
His final outing last season ended with him walking off the field with his right leg having gone almost completely numb.
To finally pitch like he did, “It’s a good feeling,” he said.
This was the version of Solesky that more closely resembled the Florida high school standout who threw 74 pitches over seven innings in a playoff game and then struck out five in the final two innings of another win just days later.
This was the same player Solesky’s mother, Theresa, remembered for how her son could hit cleanup as a corner infielder on the days he didn’t pitch.
This was the college pitcher Daniel Latham remembered watching from the opposing dugout when he noticed the competitive streak that could put him ahead of most other freshmen.
His freshman season was supposed to lead into what should have been a standout second college season.
Suddenly, everything changed.
Solesky bent down to pick up a foam roller after a workout while visiting family in New Hampshire and felt the kind of pain in his lower back that put him on the phone immediately with his mother.
Theresa, a physical therapist who stayed home in Florida when her son went north to visit family, made whatever phone calls she needed to get him to a doctor.
Soon after, he began his sophomore classes at Tulane. When fall practices began in October, Solesky couldn’t do the thing he had built his life around. He couldn’t pitch.

Photo courtesy of Solesky family
Much of what Solesky knows about pitching comes from his uncle, Len Solesky, the author of a book titled the "The Physics of Pitching."
A former major league scout for the Astros, Braves and Rays and now a consultant for nine major league teams, Len counts more than 300 current and former college pitchers and up to 17 current and former major leaguers on his client list.
He knows talent when he sees it. He saw it in Chase at a young age, back when he played catcher in Little League and could rifle a throw across a diamond like few other 9-year-olds.
Through Len, Chase learned the proper mechanics of pitching, how to load up the back side of his body so he can more quickly drive the front hip toward the target. He learned how to distance his front hip from his back shoulder so that he could create the kind of torque needed to more precisely put his arm in the right position to throw.
He learned how to plant his left foot on the downward slope of the pitching mound with the proper balance required to throw an accurate pitch, and how at that moment you’re “going downhill like a bat out of hell,” Len said.
Len could look at his 6-foot-4 brother David — Chase’s father — a left-hander whose fastball topped 90 mph when he was a Connecticut high school pitcher in the early 1980s, and make an educated guess on how Chase could grow into a 6-foot-3 right-hander with potential to succeed beyond even the college level.
Under Len’s guidance, Chase never threw curveballs or sliders until his senior high school season.
“I knew he was going to be able to sit in that mid-90 (mph) range,” Len said. “I was adamant about getting his mechanics down at an early age to protect him.”
With all that, Chase learned how to be a recruited Division I athlete. But something wasn’t quite right. His back would tighten from time to time. His high school coach knew about it. His mother did too. A physical therapist, she gave him some stretching exercises.


Chase Solesky pitches for Tulane against LSU at Alex Box Stadium, Baton Rouge, March 28, 2017. (Ted Jackson, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
Fall practices began with Chase confined to a back brace.
He could attend practices but felt out of place surrounded by able-bodied baseball players.
“When you have a guy who’s uber competitive as he is, to not be playing is a big deal,” said Andy Wells, who coached Solesky at John Carroll Catholic High School in Fort Pierce, Florida. “Baseball is his world. Baseball is what’s happening. It’s not about his girlfriend or the party or stuff like that. It’s about baseball.”
His freshman season was a success, highlighted by the three shutout innings in a win against LSU in Alex Box Stadium. The season ended with a 3.84 ERA, 40 strikeouts and 26 walks over 68 innings in 25 appearances and eight starts.
Then came the injury. Diagnosed with a Grade 1 spinal spondylolisthesis — defined by WebMd as a slipping of vertebra that occurs most commonly at the base of the spine — he did what was recommended by athletic trainers and doctors and rested for another two months.
The injury is not uncommon for pitchers, Len Solesky said.
Sometimes when a pitcher’s body continues to grow — when the legs get stronger and the pitches get thrown harder — the physical weak links are exposed.
Now looking back, Chase Solesky wishes he played out the first few months of 2018 a little differently. Given clearance to begin throwing again, Solesky hurried things along.
When he should have been building strength in his core to stabilize the vertebrae, he began throwing bullpen sessions. When he should have been easing his way back onto a mound, he was pitching in the opening series against Wright State.
When he should have been developing into a starter in the weekend rotation, he was giving up runs at an uncommon pace — two runs in 2-2/3 innings against Wright State, another two earned runs in two innings at Ole Miss and six runs in four innings at home against Southeastern Louisiana.
When he returned to Baton Rouge to face LSU, he gave up five runs in 1-1/3 innings.
“Hey, what happened?” Wells asked Solesky after one of those outings.
“I’m hurting,” Wells remembered Solesky telling him. When Wells asked what was hurting, “My back,” Solesky replied. Only this was different than what he experienced in high school. “I feel like there’s something else going on,” Wells remembered Solesky saying.

Chase Solesky pitches against Southeastern Louisiana, March 7, 2018. (Photo by Brett Duke, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
What Solesky needed was more rest. Instead, he tried to power through the pain until he couldn’t. His last outing came March 30 in front of family at South Florida, where he allowed another five runs over two innings.
He walked off the field with numbness and tingling in his leg. That ended his season.
The experience did something to Solesky. He now knows he shouldn’t have been pitching. He thought he was helping the baseball team. He wasn’t.
A year ago, Solesky began his windup by putting his hands above his head as he loaded up on the back foot. He now keeps his hands in front of his chest. He also has a more complete follow through on his pitches.
Everything about his pitching motion is more compact. There is no wasted motion. Some of this came from doing more work with Len Solesky. Chase also met with sport performance expert Eric Cressey in Jupiter, Florida, to begin a fitness regimen so he could build a stronger pitching base.
A stronger core puts less stress on the vertebrae, which creates an uptick in velocity and better command. That much was evident Sunday against George Washington, when Len Solesky watched a live video feed from his home in Florida and saw a pitching motion that remained consistent from the beginning through the last of his 101 pitches.
To reach that point, Chase Solesky followed a plan like he should have at the start of last season. Failure to do so would have meant putting his career in jeopardy.
Solesky went away for the summer and pitched in Massachusetts for the Plymouth Pilgrims of the New England Collegiate Baseball League. He made six relief appearances over the span of a month before making his first of three starts. His final start came July 31 against Danbury and he struck out six with no walks and one run allowed over six innings.
There, he gained confidence. That confidence continued to grow thorough a healthy fall and into the season. His next start will be Sunday against Ole Miss.
“Being healthy, that’s going to be big for us this year,” said Latham, the pitching coach who saw Solesky pitch against Southeastern Louisiana back before Tulane hired Latham back to his alma mater.
"What you really see (now) is the freedom of his movements and how he goes about his throwing and his bullpens and his pitching," Tulane coach Travis Jewett said.
"He knows he's back," the coach said.


Photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
When Solesky returned to the mound Sunday, he couldn't help being nervous. His legs shook, he said. He took deep breaths and stayed focused.
He struck out the first batter on three pitches. He threw eight of his first 10 pitches for strikes. He faced eight batters before allowing a hit.
In the two innings where he allowed two runs in each, he retired the first two hitters before the Colonials strung together enough two-out hits.
In the sixth inning, the two additional runs came when a fly-ball hit off a Tulane fielder's glove just as he reached across the foul line. Jewett argued against the umpire's ruling of a fair ball to the point where the umpire ejected him from the game.
Those two runs counted against Solesky's earned run average.
"Two is a lot better than four," he told his high school coach when they spoke by phone a couple days after the game.
Yes, this is the Solesky everybody knows, the competitor who finally can get back thinking only about defeating his opponent. There is no more pain. Just like he planned.
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CGXM: I'm curious as to why you copied and pasted the entire article 6 weeks after it was published and you posted the link?
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