College baseball: Day in the life of locals at Chicago State

CHICAGO – Up on the 18th story, windows stretch from the apartment’s wooden floors to its high ceilings, framing the Chicago skyline like a postcard. Leather couches and granite countertops decorate the spacious two-bedroom apartment. A receptionist checks in guests at the lobby. A swimming pool sits on the roof.

This is the Lex. Its tagline: “Live the luxury lifestyle.”

For several members of the Chicago State baseball team, this constitutes college housing. Ramen noodles and pizza boxes are nowhere to be found. The only indications that college kids live here: Each room is stuffed with two beds to make it more affordable, and – more telling – a poster with bikini models graces the wall.

When recruits come to visit, the Chicago State players drive them 10 miles north to their apartment to help seal the deal.

“This place is a huge sell,” freshman catcher Cody Freund said. “I was kind of on the fence about coming here. Then Chase (Matheson) took me here.”

The luxury apartment in Chicago’s up-and-coming South Loop neighborhood is the first indication that playing baseball at Chicago State is not your typical college experience.

On a Thursday in May, eight players with ties to McHenry County – Cody Freund (McHenry), Andy Gertonson (Crystal Lake Central), Nick Kostalek (Huntley), Jake Perkins (Huntley), Chase Matheson (McHenry), Joe Ross (Jacobs), Matt Schmidt (Jacobs), Matt Sullivan (Huntley) – opened the doors to their apartments and dorm rooms and to their lives during a day that started with a graduation ceremony and ended with a 13-inning baseball game.

Graduating on time and on budget

As the clock approaches 9:30 a.m., men in sports jackets and women in high heels eagerly file into their seats at Jones Convocation Center. The 7,000-seat facility plays home to the Chicago State basketball teams. With the championship banners hanging overhead and the way parents holler out from the stands and wave programs, the facility has all the feels of a major sporting event.

In the program, the four seniors from McHenry County are listed among their classmates.

In the history department: Nick Kostalek***

An asterisk next to a ballplayer’s name is almost never a good thing. This is the exception. It denotes that Kostalek will graduate summa cum laude. The relief pitcher’s GPA is a 4.0, the academic equivalent of a perfect game.

Three of the four McHenry County natives graduating on this Thursday will do so with Latin honors. Chase Matheson had one asterisk for cum laude. Joe Ross had two for magna cum laude.

As a team, Chicago State achieved a 3.2 GPA or higher for six straight semesters. This season, the Cougars earned the school's first-ever perfect score in the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate, a metric that measures eligibility and retention.

Flying around the country and practicing hours a day made these achievements all the more difficult. They leave for away games on Thursdays and get back late on Sunday nights. Even when they are at school, Kostalek estimates he attended only 10 of his 48 night classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

But, as much as college baseball’s hectic schedule made success in the classroom challenging, it also helped make the grades possible.

Players were essentially locked in rooms alone during study hours, forced to do homework. Academic advisors stayed on top of grades, telling them what to take and communicating with professors for them when they're on the road.

“Without playing baseball in college,” Matheson says, “I don’t think I would have graduated in four years.”

The first speaker steps to the microphone and asks all of those who have completed all four years with a perfect 4.0 to stand. The ballplayers look toward Kostalek. He’s sitting. Maybe it’s the pitcher in him, not wishing to jinx his perfect game.

The others might not have graduated with perfect grades. But they did graduate with something perhaps even more important – an affordable education.

Chicago State is easily one of the least expensive four-year universities in Illinois. For the 2015-16 school year, tuition ($8,820), mandatory fees ($2,938) and on-campus housing ($8,724) will cost a student $20,482.

Five miles up South Cottage Grove Avenue, the University of Chicago costs almost $70,000 per year. Likewise, the players have friends who attended Division III schools where they cannot receive athletic scholarships. They’ve easily dug themselves six figures in debt.

The four will graduate with an average of about $10,000 in debt thanks to inexpensive in-state tuition, scholarships and the two years they spent at junior college. It’s a manageable figure at a time when crippling student loan debt is sending an entire generation into the workforce, struggling to fight back from an 0-2 count.

Papers and planes

At Chicago State’s newly remodeled baseball field, just a routine fly ball from where the commencement ceremony was held, the next part of the day begins.

In the second inning, Matheson strolls to the plate, as Dierks Bentley’s country hit “I’m Getting Drunk on a Plane” wafts over the field.

"It combines my two favorite things – flying and having a good time,” said Matheson, who will be starting flight school at the College of DuPage in July.

Flying is what really sold Matheson when he was deciding where to transfer after completing two seasons at McHenry County College. He admits he knew of Chicago State, but he didn't really "know" Chicago State. He visited more out of a courtesy to the coaches than anything else.

During the tour, the coach took him to a brand new coach bus, fully equipped with Wi-Fi and satellite TVs. Impressed, Matheson’s mom asked the coach where the team would be busing.

“The only place we take this is to the airport,” Chase remembers coach Steve Joslyn saying.

Thanks to a six figure travel budget, the Cougars crisscrosses the country by plane. (However, contrary to Matheson’s walkup song, they are typically using Southwest’s free Wi-Fi to finish papers on the plane.)

"Our travel budget is probably bigger than most people's entire budget," Joslyn said. "That's probably not something the university is thrilled about."

Playing in the Western Athletic Conference, the Cougars travel from coast to coast — Florida and South Carolina for spring training and then California, Colorado, Utah, Texas and Seattle for conference games. Andy Gertonson, a junior in his first season with the Cougars, said each of the first four weeks of the season, he was in a state he had never visited before.

“You can’t beat four weekends in a row on vacation,” Gertonson said. “Just playing baseball.”

Each time the team boards the bus to the airport, the coach walks down the aisle handing out crisp $100 bills. In addition to the scholarship, the books and the free gear, each players gets this money to spend on food for the Thursday to Sunday trips.

Chicago State is a small Division I school. But the experience, at least in terms of travel, is in some ways better than some bigger Division I programs, many of which bus to play conference opponents.

“That’s the best part of going to Chicago State,” Matheson said. “You get to travel across the country. You could go to UIC and go play Youngstown State, Cleveland State, Milwaukee. Bus everywhere. Or you could go fly. Go play Cal.”

Meanwhile, back on the field, the innings are piling up. Freund drives in a run in the bottom of the ninth to tie the score at 4. Soon, the scoreboard runs out of places to put zeros. Each frame is cleared. The result of the 11th inning fill the spot reserved for the first inning.

It mirrored the cyclical nature of a college baseball player’s life. Batting practice at 3 p.m. Game at 6 p.m. Postgame after. One game and one trip meshes with the others, with no clear definition between beginning and end.

“You’re getting in at 11:30, midnight. Then you’ve got to get ready for your Monday and Tuesday night courses,” Kostalek said. “The next thing you know, it’s Thursday and you’re flying out again.”

The game on this Thursday ends with an overthrow and a mob at first base, as Gertonson dashes home to score the winning run.

It’s 9:50 p.m., 3 hours 50 minutes and 13 innings since first pitch. Chicago State wins, 5-4.

Big league dreams 

Back in the apartment on the 18th floor, Gertonson, Matheson, Ross and Kostalek are wolfing down their classic postgame meal, McDonalds, and recapping the game.

Even by their standards, it’s been more than your average Thursday. A day that started at 8 a.m. took them from graduation to a 13-inning victory.

Discussion drifts from baseball to graduation. Baseball is their last remaining tie to the university. They have just three games remaining on the schedule. Then, who knows?

“At the end of graduation, they were talking about how you’re alumni now. It’s like, wow, this is crazy,” Ross said. “I’m an alumni of a university. But I’m still playing and representing a university as if I’m a student-athlete."

“That’s the weird part,” Matheson said. “Now I’ve got to go get a job.”

Kostalek and Matheson have played together since they were 9 years old, 13 seasons in total, almost their entire adult lives.

When asked the name of their first team, they respond in unison, “McHenry County Hurricanes."

In the middle of the conversation, Ross sneaks over to the other side of the room and pulls out an X-Box controller and a small TV. He underwent Tommy John surgery on his elbow to repair a torn ulnar collateral ligament in April. It will still be another several months before he can uncork a fastball.

“This is all I have,” he says, holding up the controller.

On the TV screen, Philadelphia Phillies minor leaguer Joe Ross toes the rubber. Ross created the computer character on "MLB The Show" to be an exact replica of himself: 6-foot-3, 215 pounds, left handed.

He throws with the same motion, taking the ball over his head and kicking high before delivering from three-quarters sidearm.

The plane rides and the three-day weekends might have have attracted the players to Chicago State. But what really kept them going, what convinced them to go to a junior college when many of their friends went away to school and what kept them focused on the Division I dream, is the game they learned on the ballfields in McHenry County.

Even after the nearly 4-hour, 13-inning game, Ross still hasn’t had enough of it.

“I’m trying to get him to the ‘Bigs,’” Ross says.

He’s not just talking about the Joe Ross on the TV screen.