Greenville – In 2018, Nathan Barolet transferred to Murphy High School and helped the Bulldogs make history by winning the school’s first baseball state championship.
Fast forward four years later, and he did the same at Division II North Greenville University, helping the Crusaders win their first national championship. When the Cherokee Scout interviewed Barolet about his season last month, being a national champion hadn’t sunk in just yet.
“It’s honestly surreal,” Barolet said. “It’s something I’ve been talking about with my parents since I was four years old, and to actually be able to do it. I’m still walking on cloud nine.”
The road to a national championship was significant for Barolet and the North Greenville program. After spending two years at Florence-Darlington Technical College, Barolet transferred to North Greenville ahead of the 2021 season.
In the first weeks of practice ahead of the 2021 season, Barolet tore the quadricep in his right leg. He still was able to pitch in seven games that year, posting a 2.25 earned run average in eight innings.
During his exit meeting with the coaching staff after the 2021 season, Barolet was told if healthy he would have a much bigger role in the bullpen in 2022. Unfortunately, Barolet had nerve relocation surgery in his right elbow early in the season, where doctors took his ulnar nerve and moved it to his elbow because his hand kept going numb. Before 2021, he had never had a baseball-related injury.
Barolet was still able to pitch in 14 games this year, recording a 3.94 ERA and 16 strikeouts. He also pitched in two games during the Crusaders’ NCAA Tournament run.
“It definitely meant a lot to come back out and help my team get to where we were after surgery,” he said. “Because it was in question if I was going to be able to play that early in the year.”
The national title was also part of an eight year journey for North Greenville under head coach Landon Powell. In 2014, the year before Powell took over as coach, the Crusaders went 8-35. In his first season, they won 29 games and the program’s first Conference Carolinas championship. North Greenville has won at least 30 games in each full season since, and has qualified for the last four NCAA Tournaments.
The Crusaders entered the season ranked outside the top 25, putting a chip on their shoulder. After getting off to a 9-4 start, Barolet says the season really took off in the second game of a Feb. 26 doubleheader against Francis Marion.
After splitting the first two games in the series, North Greenville was down 7-2 in the bottom of the eighth. The Crusaders rallied to score six runs to take an 8-7 lead and then shut the door in the top of the ninth to hold on for a win.
Barolet thought last year’s team may have been better, but said that game proved this team had a different edge to it than in past years.
“This team was so gritty and determined not to let anybody take away anything from us,” Barolet said. “We felt like we had to earn everything.”
In Division I the baseball tournament features four 16 team regionals, then 16 teams in eight super regionals and then eight teams in the College World Series. Division II had 56 teams broken up into eight geographic regions across the country, then further divided teams into three or four team brackets in each region for the first round. The two winners in each region advanced to the “super regionals,” with the eight winners in that round advancing to the College World Series.
Unlike in Division I, where the College World Series is double elimination and then a best two out of three championship, Division II is just double elimination.
Barolet said his team got its stiffest tests in the first two rounds. After losing on a walkoff home run in the regional last year, North Greenville dropped its second game in the round this year against Lenoir-Rhyne before beating the Bears twice to advance.
In the Super Regional, the Crusaders got past Columbus State University, which ended their season last year. They won all four of their games in the World Series, clinching the national championship with a 5-3 win over Point Loma Nazarene University on June 10.
Barolet has another year of eligibility, but he’s not sure whether he want to use it yet. He has another year of school to go as he works toward graduating from North Greenville with a degree in sports management, and will evaluate whether he wants to play baseball again as the season gets closer.
If this was his last season playing baseball, Barolet takes pride knowing he helped make history at both Murphy as well as North Greenville.
“Both times, we were the first team to do it,” he said. “Both times, it gave me this huge sense of pride and huge sense of accomplishment. Knowing what my teammates and I had accomplished will always be the No. 1.”