Champions' TriBUne Archive
By:
Shea Langeliers
Champions' TriBUne is a special feature through Baylor Athletics that will give you the student-athlete's perspective and tell their story in their voice. Shea Langeliers, a junior All-American catcher from Keller, Texas, is hitting .304 this season with seven homers and 31 RBI. A freshman All-American and 2018 Gold Glove award winner, Shea was a 34th-round draft pick by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2016 out of Keller High School. Baylor baseball (34-17) faces Loyola Marymount (32-23) at 3 p.m. CDT Friday at the NCAA Regional in Los Angeles:
Three years ago, when I took my name out of the MLB Draft, I just didn't think I was ready to play baseball for a job yet. I didn't think I was ready to be in a different state for five or six months out of the year, away from my family. My parents were actually more toward me going into the draft out of high school. I was the one that really wanted to go to college.
Obviously, it came down to my choice, what I wanted to do. The biggest thing for me is for three more years I get to mature, and my dad can come to pretty much every game, if he's not working. I think he's missed maybe two or three games in three years. That's awesome. Just being an hour and a half away from home for three years, playing baseball and maturing, I think that's what I really needed. More than the baseball part of it, I felt like I needed to mature as a person and I wasn't ready to go off on my own yet.
When I saw my name get selected on the MLB draft tracker, I was like, "What's going on? I told everybody that I'm going to college and I didn't want to get drafted. At first, it was kind of terrifying. But then, Gerald Turner, the Blue Jays' scout, called and said, "Hey, it's just a courtesy pick. We want to keep a good relationship with you through college." That was actually a pretty good feeling.
Getting my Baylor offer is kind of a funny story. I was playing for the Arlington A's in summer ball, and we had a weekend off. My best friend Brady Lindsly, who's the catcher at OU now, was playing for the Dallas Patriots and they were going to Florida and needed a third baseman. So, they invited me to be on the team for that weekend, and I actually had a really good weekend. I played third, hit pretty well, and that's when Coach Johnigan called me. I wasn't even playing for my own team.
I played third base until my sophomore year in high school. That's when the high school coach made the switch between Gabe Martinez, who's the catcher at Air Force now, and me. When I first started, I wasn't much of a defensive catcher other than I could catch and throw pretty well. It took a lot for me to start being good at blocking. My senior year, that's when it started clicking and I felt comfortable behind the plate.
You have to pay attention to everything. At catcher, you're the only player on the field that can see every position and you have to understand what's going on in every situation. So, it's definitely physically and mentally demanding.
I guess I've always had a pretty decent arm, but it's something you have to work on every day to get better. A lot of it comes down to instincts. When you see that guy take off, you have to kind of make the decision unconsciously, "Did he get a good jump? Did he get a bad jump?" If he got a really good jump, I'm just trying to get rid of the ball as quick as I can. I don't necessarily care where it's going, I'm just hoping that I'm throwing it on the money. And then if he gets a bad jump, that's where you can take your time, step through it, make that strong throw through the infielder. But, it just comes down to whether or not the base runner is really fast, gets a good jump, all of that.
I was pretty dead-set on coming to Baylor, but I did make some other visits. I didn't really like TCU, it never felt like it clicked there, and Arkansas was way too far away for me. My whole point of going to college was staying close. I went to Baylor and fell in love with it; loved the people, loved the coaches, loved everything about it.
When the coaching change happened at Baylor, there was definitely some nervousness. I didn't know if Coach Rod knew who I was, but thankfully Coach Taylor had recruited me a little bit when he was at Houston and kind of knew who I was. Eventually, when I got that call from Coach Rod, he told me, "Hey, Coach Taylor has seen you play, heard you're a pretty good player. I'm going to need to watch you play a few times, but your scholarship is good. You're still coming to Baylor."
That freshman year, we came in during the Summer II session, after the Fourth of July. And I went home every chance I got, because I just wanted to go home and be with my parents and sister all the time. Every weekend, I went home. Even that fall, I went home a lot. It was just a lot at first. I came into Baylor as a computer science major, and that was a little too much for me, trying to balance baseball and class and everything else. My first couple semesters, I was barely keeping my head above water. I was just skating by.
Even though I had a good freshman year, hitting .313 with 10 homers, I knew I needed to become better hitting the ball the other way. I was a big pull guy. Going into summer ball, I worked with the hitting coach for the Chatham Anglers, just hitting the ball where it's pitched and hitting everything to right-center in batting practice. I felt really comfortable coming back from that and had a really good fall, but then I just started slumping my sophomore year.
It was tough, for sure. But looking back now, I think it was one of the greatest things for me to go through that. Baseball is such a game of failure. So, understanding what that's like going through that, and being able to overcome it, is huge. Everybody's going to go through it more than once. And the next time I go through that, I'm going to know exactly what to do, exactly how to overcome it, and I'll get out of it faster.
When we got on that run last year, winning something like 22 out of 25, that was some of the best baseball I've ever been a part of at the end of the season. We hit that midway point in Big 12, and when we went to Memphis we all felt it. We all knew what we were capable of, even though we were a pretty young team. When it finally clicked, we felt like we couldn't lose. It was crazy. When you're playing like that, it feels like all you have to do is just show up with your teammates and go out and play and have fun, and the score's going to end up in your favor every time. That's when baseball is the most fun.
My freshman year, we went 0-2 in the Big 12 tournament and got knocked out. So, there's a little added pressure, just knowing that it means a little bit more at that tournament. But, when
Cody Bradford went out and went 7 2/3 innings and had like 12 strikeouts against OU and we won, 4-0, I think the attitude was, "All right, nothing changes. We just go out and play our game." Obviously, winning the Big 12 tournament last year is one of the coolest things I've ever been a part of in my life.
The seniors on that team were just standout guys, they're such awesome people. We knew how hard they had worked before we got here. The class before we got here was kind of the class that got tested: Do they really want to be here? Coach Rod was just trying to weed out the people that didn't really want to be here, because he's trying to turn the program around. Just knowing how hard they worked for so long, and to be able to come out on top in the Big 12 for them, that was awesome. It brings you to tears.
Coach
Ruben Noriega – Rube – has been awesome. When I first got here, he was kind of intimidating, just because I didn't really know what he was about. He was this super-high energy guy. He'd ramp up the pitching machine to like 95 mph, put me 20 feet away from it, give me a mini-mitt and say, "Catch this." That's a little exaggerated, but that's what it felt like. But, I needed that.
Everything about Ruben has made me a better catcher. Every difference about me catching between high school and now, I give that credit to Ruben. He works his butt off every day. He's always talking to me about watching film of me, watching film of big-leaguers and comparing the two, stuff like that. What do I need to do to get better and be more like that?
This year, my focus was more on the team. Honestly, it's easy for me, because what we do as a team is way more important than any of the individual stuff. We knew this was going to be a good team this year. Obviously, we've had some setbacks, like Cody going down. But, we've been resilient all year. That's why this team is so special. You lose the Big 12 Pitcher of the Year, a Preseason All-American, and you have a guy like
Paul Dickens step up. That's why it's easy for me to focus on this team, more than accolades and anything like that, just because it's a special group of guys and we're trying to accomplish something Baylor has never accomplished before.
Three years later, I don't think I would change one thing. It's hard for me to put into words all the things that I have gotten out of Baylor. College gave me a girlfriend. It's given me lifelong friends. My freshman year, that senior class, we still keep in touch. Guys like Aaron Dodson, Matt Menard, Nick Lewis. I've gone to weddings and watched them get married. And then, the coaches have been awesome. They're always there for you, regardless if it's baseball or life in general. There's just a special bond between a player and a coach.
Just everything about Baylor – classes, time management, having to balance everything – I feel like I'm a completely different person now than I was my senior year in high school. Just simple things like being able to take care of myself without my parents being there, I definitely feel like I'm ready at this point in my life.
With the draft coming up next week, I guess I'd say I'm nervously excited, just because it's another step in my life where it's still kind of an unknown. I haven't been there yet. But when it comes, I'm sure I'll be more excited than nervous.
I'm going to try to come back and finish my degree as soon as I can, just taking classes in the offseason, online classes, stuff like that. My dad has always told me that a degree is something they can never take away from you.
Previous Champions' TriBUne Features
Track & Field - Kiana Horton (May 22, 2019)
Men's Golf - Garrett May (May 9, 2019)
Women's Golf - Maria Vesga (May 2, 2019)
Acrobatics & Tumbling - Camryn Bryant (April 25, 2019)
Equestrian - Shannon Hogue (April 16, 2019)
Women's Tennis - Angelina Shakhraichuk (April 9, 2019)
Women's Basketball - Lauren Cox (March 22, 2019)
Track & Field - Wil London (March 7, 2019)
Men's Basketball - Jake Lindsey (March 4, 2019)
Softball - Nicky Dawson (Feb. 21, 2019)
Baseball - Josh Bissonette (Feb. 14, 2019)
Men's Tennis - Will Little (Jan. 31, 2019)
Men's Basketball - King McClure (Jan. 17, 2019)
Women's Basketball - Chloe Jackson (Jan. 3, 2019)
Football - Blake Blackmar (Dec. 13, 2018)
Volleyball - Braya Hunt (Nov. 29, 2018)
Soccer - Jackie Crowther (Nov. 16, 2018)
Cross Country - Alison Andrews-Paul (Nov. 8, 2018)
Football- Ira Lewis (Nov. 6, 2018)
