When Dan Fitzgerald was the head coach at Des Moines Area Community College in 2011, the Bears earned one of the nation’s best records but suffered a premature elimination on the fourth day of the NJCAA Division II World Series at the hands of Western Oklahoma State College.
That left Fitzgerald “devastated,” with little to do in the days that followed other than watch rival schools take part in the semifinal games in which he felt he should have been coaching.
His wife Kelly, as he recalled, asked him, “What are you doing, just torturing yourself?”
“I said, ‘Well, kind of’ — I said, ‘We should be playing,'” Fitzgerald said. “She said, ‘If you win that, then the next step is you got to repeat, and then you got to win three in a row.'”
Fitzgerald, now the fourth-year head coach of the Kansas baseball team, got choked up as he relayed that story on Monday afternoon, following KU’s season-ending 13-2 loss to Oklahoma in the Lawrence Super Regional at Hoglund Ballpark. The Jayhawks had come quite a long way in four years, and may well have been ahead of schedule with all the spoils of their 2026 season: Big 12 regular-season and conference-tournament titles, plus a home regional championship and the opportunity to host a super regional.
“That would have been not something that I would have predicted would happen in four years,” Fitzgerald said.
But as he relayed by means of his DMACC anecdote, “I think the hard part about this is that the carrot is always there” — that is, there is always some level of additional success to which one can aspire.
And so he tries to recontextualize that “carrot” in terms of what happens along the way to accomplishing the various objectives and attaining all the honors.
“It’s the time, it’s the experience and the journey,” Fitzgerald said. “This was a wild one, and one I’m incredibly grateful for. You just don’t want it to end, because I know that you don’t win a national championship and then everything’s fixed. To me it’s the journey, it’s watching guys like this grow up and it’s watching guys grow in their faith. It’s all those things.”
Several of his players shared similar feelings postgame in discussing how they would choose to reflect on the year that was.
“The memories outside of baseball, the memories that we had off the field, in the locker room, (you) can’t take those away no matter if you win the last game or lose the last game,” said shortstop Tyson LeBlanc, an LSU Eunice transfer who emerged from relative anonymity to put together one of the best individual seasons in program history. “It’s been a special season, special players. I love every single one of the teammates that we did it with, too.”
That last remark was a particularly resounding declaration considering how little they all knew each other upon arriving on campus last summer. Precious few significant contributors returned from the 2025 season in which KU had returned to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 11 years.
“Looking into this season where we had eight returners, maybe, everybody new, and just how we came together as a team and the culture that we set, it was beautiful,” said closer Boede Rahe, “and it was amazing to develop lifelong friendships with these guys.”
Right-handed starter Dominic Voegele was one of the few consistent fixtures in the formative years of the Fitzgerald era. He started all 48 games in which he appeared since joining KU for the 2024 season as a freshman out of Columbia, Illinois. In his tenure, he said that the team chemistry has grown substantially.
“I mean, I hate to say it, but it happens every year, the season comes to an end, and this one just happened to be the last college season,” Voegele said. “It’s been awesome with these guys the whole year, and it was pretty heartfelt there at the end.”
Voegele is a junior, but like many of his teammates will presumably be headed to the professional ranks later this summer as part of the MLB Draft in July.
On the other hand, the Jayhawks may not have to reset quite as much as usual ahead of 2027. KU had a handful of junior starters who could choose to return if they don’t turn pro, along with sophomores who played key roles this year like outfielders Tyson Owens and Savion Flowers and pitchers Mason Cook and Riane Ritter.
As Fitzgerald puts it, the next step for KU beyond this season is “sustainability” — just as the program was able to sustain the success of 2025 with another NCAA Tournament berth in 2026. Athletic director Travis Goff has also stated that KU Athletics will build an indoor practice facility, which could go a long way in that department.
In the meantime, it’s officially the offseason for Fitzgerald and his staff, nearly four years to the day since he took over at KU.
“I’ve got months of processing now and figuring out next steps, and so there’s the administrative hat and the coaching hat that’s still on,” he said. “But yeah, there’s a human element to not wanting to say goodbye to a lot of those guys.”
