'A perfect storm': How an IVC grad led Heartland baseball to an NJCAA national title
PEORIA — Heartland Community College brought a College World Series championship home to central Illinois.
The Normal-based school won the NJCAA Div.-II College World Series with an 8-6 win in June over Southeastern Community College at Enid, Oklahoma.
And there were plenty of ties to the Peoria area helping Heartland to its first baseball national championship.
"We had a very good year last year," said Heartland manager Chris Razo, a 33-year-old Chillicothe native. "Our core group made it to the World Series last year. So going into this season, we kind of knew early on this team could go again and finish the job.
"We'll never have that much talent again here. It was a perfect storm, from older guys (on extended eligibility from COVID), to a talented recruiting class and motivation to win.
"Just a perfect storm in our favor."
And in the eye of that storm was Razo, the Illinois Valley Central High School graduate who was part of a 40-2 IHSA state champion team under coach Jerry Rashid in 2005-06. Razo eventually won Journal Star Player of the Year and then went on to play two years at Heartland College, helping the team to its first-ever NJCAA World Series appearance.
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Then he earned a ride to Illinois State, where the right-handed pitcher led the Redbirds to the only outright Missouri Valley Conference regular-season baseball championship in program history.
"I think Jerry Rashid very early on instilled winning in me," said Razo, who was the Milwaukee Brewers' 24th-round pick in the 2013 MLB Draft and pitched parts of two seasons in the Midwest League for Wisconsin. "As a 15-year-old on a team winning a state tournament, I didn't have a clue. But I gained an understanding of what it takes to win.
"We went to the World Series as a player at Heartland, then we got our first conference championship at ISU and now this back at Heartland.
"Winning is what I've known."
The road to the World Series
Razo is in his fourth season as Heartland's head coach. With recruiting coordinator Tyler Albright alongside, the Hawks have built a roster in which 32 of 41 players are from Illinois.
The Normal-based Heartland athletics program includes Manual High School grad Ryan Knox as athletic director. On the baseball field, the roster includes East Peoria product Parker Bradford, a redshirt right-handed pitcher, and IVC's Nate Cooley, a catcher-third baseman who hit .375 in six games. Also from the area are IVC right-handed pitcher Nick Rainey and Galesburg utility man Grant Aten.
"Being a JUCO, obviously our goal is to stay within the community if we can," Razo said. "We try to get kids who weren't seen, or recruited well enough. We try to build an expectation to win."
57-5 and 32-0
The 2023 Heartland Hawks went 57-5. Not a misprint. They went 32-0 in conference play, and at one point won 24 straight games.
In the second game of the World Series at David Allen Memorial Ballpark in Enid, Okla., St. Johns River State broke a 3-3 tie in the top of the ninth with an RBI single. But Heartland won it with two outs in the bottom of the ninth when Ben Hartl belted a two-run, walk-off homer for a 5-4 win.
The next game, a rematch with St. Johns, saw two long rain delays plus extra innings in a 9-9 battle causing postponement of the game late on a Thursday night. It resumed eight hours later, on a Friday, and in the bottom of the 10th Heartland walked off St. John's again with a bases-loaded sacrifice fly from Normal U-High grad Daniel Mosele.
That put Heartland into the championship game, where it handled Southeastern Iowa Community College, 8-6.
"Our first game (a 6-3 win over Lackawanna College), we were losing (3-1) in the seventh, and we came back and won," Razo said. "Then the second game, we walk-off with Hartl's home run," Razo said. "Then we walked off St. Johns again in the third game — that team, we felt, was the best in the tournament next to us. All year we came from behind constantly.
"Never been part of anything like that. Not as a player, either."
Coach of the Year and 2024
In his playing days, Razo was part of a high school state championship, a JUCO World Series appearance and all-Region 24 and MWAC Pitcher of the Year honors, and at NCAA Div.-I Illinois State a place on the Missouri Valley Conference first team and MVC Pitcher of the Year honors.
On Monday, he added to his coaching resume, which already includes consecutive trips to the NJCAA Div.-II World Series. He was named by the American Baseball Coaches Association as its 2023 NJCAA Div.-II Coach of the Year.
Heartland and Razo will leave 2023 behind, although the accolades and the reputation built by the team will follow them into 2024.
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"The 32-0 in conference play, I've never seen that, never heard of such a thing, and it's the most impressive thing I'll remember about the season," Razo said. "We're going to lose some key pieces now, but we've got some talented kids here and on the way.
"We look at it as a reload, not a rebuild. And we know, everybody wants to knock off the top team."
Dave Eminian is the Journal Star sports columnist, and covers Bradley men's basketball, the Rivermen and Chiefs. He writes the Cleve In The Eve sports column for pjstar.com. He can be reached at 686-3206 or deminian@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @icetimecleve.
This article originally appeared on Journal Star: Chillicothe IVC grad coaches team to NJCAA World Series title
