NORTH TEXAS INSIDER

Mean Green plans return to spring rite

By Jeff Wilson

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

DENTON - The spring sports schedule at North Texas stretches into May, with athletes on five teams doing what others did during the fall and winter -- minus the fanfare.

The perception among the 32,000-member student body is that athletics end when basketball season ends, and school spirit evaporates like the remnants of a morning rain storm that has given way to an 85-degree day.

But athletic director Rick Villarreal hopes the return of a rite of spring -- baseball -- can keep fans thinking Mean Green through the end of the school year and also put UNT on par with the other Division I schools in Texas.

"I think that in the state of Texas, at the Division I level, most places have three major sports -- football, basketball, baseball," Villarreal said. "It gives you a year-round sports program on campus. By adding softball last year and by bringing baseball back, it keeps your school year going."

Villarreal said baseball has been penciled in for 2007, and word is spreading among the coaching community. He said between 150 and 200 coaches have sent applications to coach the first baseball team at UNT since an unsuccessful five-year run from 1984-88 in the Southland Conference.

"You have to have target dates, because if you don't, you keep working toward nothing," Villarreal said.

"We have to make sure all the funding is in place and everything's in place to do it right. We'll try to meet the schedule."

The team's yet-to-be-built stadium should be completed by 2006, in time for the start of the Texas Collegiate League season.

Villarreal said the Denton Outlaws Baseball Club has pledged to fund the construction on university-owned land near Liberty Christian School and donate the ballpark to the school.

"The fact that it would help bring college baseball back, we're really excited about that," Outlaws general manager John Hampton said. "Everybody that's involved with the club, we love the game of baseball. With so many college programs being cut across the nation, it's exciting to think that you'd be part of something that helps bring back a college baseball program."

Hampton said the Outlaws are short of meeting costs to complete a stadium for this season. He expects the fan-friendly ballpark to hold 8,000 fans, combining intimate features of Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, N.Y., and Fenway Park in Boston.

Hampton and Villarreal said neither party wants to build anything less than a first-class facility, so there is no urgency to build for this TCL season.

"They were looking for a place to play, and I knew I wanted baseball back on this campus," Villarreal said. "So the partnership of the two made a good marriage. We want to build a facility right, regardless of what the situation is. We'll continue the project and get it done."

The addition of baseball also fits nicely into Villarreal's long-term vision of improving North Texas' national image.

"You've got to add sports to increase the athletic program," he said. "You've got re-evaluate your athletic program to get it to the point that it has all the pieces to make it successful."

Baseball could be the missing piece, but it won't be missing much longer.