West Virginia’s Jace Rinehart is currently first on the team in home runs, RBIs, and doubles this season, playing a large role in WVU’s 27-4 start as he hits fourth in the Mountaineer lineup most days.
Rinehart’s journey to WVU is an interesting one, and his grandmother was the one who granted him final permission to become a Mountaineer.
At first glance, Jace Rinehart seems like he belongs in a West Virginia uniform, being a native of Mannington, W.Va., attending North Marion High School. Rinehart was on the radar of the West Virginia coaching staff out of high school, but never got an offer to play, therefore going to play for USC Upstate.
“He was a really good player that we liked. He was a catcher and a really good worker, and we passed on him in high school. We said we don’t think he’s quite ready to make an impact as a freshman. And just because you’re not ready to make an impact as a freshman or we don’t offer you doesn’t mean that you won’t eventually be that player,” West Virginia head coach Steve Sabins said.
At USC Upstate, Rinehart was a two-time All-Big South Second Team selection, playing in 127 total games, mashing 24 home runs with 99 RBIs in three seasons there.
Last offseason, Rinehart did not have the intention of hitting the transfer portal until his former head coach Mike McGuire left for another job.
“I never really thought about it. I consider myself a pretty loyal person, so even going into my fourth year, I was planning on staying at USC Upstate and staying loyal to the program that I started with until my coach decided to leave,” Rinehart said.
That’s when things would get difficult for Sabins and company, trying to get the West Virginia native to come home to West Virginia.
“We were keeping tabs on him because there’s a kid from West Virginia that has 18 home runs at USC Upstate his junior year, we know about it. So, it’s not just like you see him in the portal one day and you’re like, hey, who’s Jace Rinehart? We knew, hey, there’s a West Virginia kid killing it at the Division I level that could probably play for us. And so, I bet we called him within five minutes of him getting in the portal because we had tracked him throughout the course of his career,” Sabins said.
Once Sabins reached out to Rinehart, he did not have to do much selling to Rinehart to come to WVU. The person he had to sell was Rinehart’s grandmother.
Prior to Rinehart going to college, his grandmother was a huge fan of West Virginia baseball, according to Sabins. She had season tickets, while their family frequented WVU football games on a bus.
“His grandma was a huge Mountaineer fan. So she had the Mountaineer flag and the license plate, season ticket holder, I guess they had a bus that was a West Virginia bus [and] they would go to football games. And when we didn’t recruit her grandson, she burnt the flag, and she got rid of the license plate and sold the bus and the whole thing,” Sabins said.
Sabins found this out as he was recruiting Rinehart out of the portal, and Rinehart was sold on West Virginia, but needed his grandmother to also be sold on him becoming a Mountaineer.
“We talked with his family, we kind of learned the whole grandma story. So Jace said that he and his family were in, but we were going to have to convince Grandma to be able to let him come here. And so that’s been the whole thing and she’s back on board now. She’s a Mountaineer again,” Sabins said.
Not only is she a Mountaineer again, but more importantly, her grandson is too, and his bat in the middle of West Virginia’s lineup has paid dividends for Sabins thus far this year.
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