Former Conway HS slugger Young a natural fit at Coastal Carolina

G.K. Young says he’s told the story numerous times over the last couple of years, but perhaps there’s no better time to tell it again.

After slugging home runs in each of Coastal Carolina’s first two Big South tournament games this week in Boiling Springs, N.C., Young sat in a hotel room Thursday before boarding the team bus for lunch and practice and started at the beginning with how he ended up here.

How he ended up mashing home runs for his hometown college team while helping lead a Chanticleer resurgence this spring and, this week in particular, showing just how much of a key cog he is to coach Gary Gilmore’s hopes of re-establishing the program as a national contender.

“I’ve said this a good bit, but ever since I was 10 years old I’ve watched Coach Gilmore-coached teams and how good they were,” Young said. “I only went on one [recruiting] visit and that was Coastal Carolina. I’ve bled teal since I was little and that’s the only place I wanted to go play. I got a few offers from Carolina and other places, but I didn’t want to go there. That wasn’t for me. I wanted to play here in my hometown and play for Coach Gilmore.”

It’s worked out remarkably well for both sides as Young, the former Conway High School standout, found an immediate spot in the Coastal Carolina lineup as a freshman last year, while it’s become abundantly clear now the Chants landed a star in the making thanks to their proximity and reputation.

Now a sophomore, Young ranks third on the team with a .305 batting average, tied for third with nine home runs and leads the Chants with 49 RBIs from the designated hitter spot.

Of course, that’s not always how the recruiting narrative works for mid-major programs, even those as proven and respected as Coastal Carolina.

“It’s been kind of a godsend to us because it’s been a long row to hoe for us over the years to find local kids who basically embraced Coastal as an equal opportunity to going to Clemson or South Carolina,” Gilmore said. “He chose us over them from the get-go. It was an incredible thing and it’s been an awesome story for both of us on both sides.”

Sold on CCU

Young no doubt had options coming out of Conway, where he drew considerable attention while setting school records for single-season home runs (13), career homers (29) and career RBIs (127).

And just as he’s showing at Coastal Carolina now, the powerful slugger had made it clear to his high school coaches early on that he was bound for big things.

“We knew right away that he was going to be that kind of player,” Conway baseball coach Anthony Carroll said. “With his size, his swing, we knew that we had something special on our hands and it was just a matter of where he would go and how he would develop.”

A two-sport athlete at that time while also playing offensive line for the Tigers football team, Young never had any question himself about where he was going.

When he got invited to take his visit to Coastal Carolina the summer before his junior year, he quickly let Gilmore and everybody else know that he had made his college decision and it wasn’t changing.

“[Gilmore] had come to watch me play a game a week earlier and he told me he wanted me to come on a visit that next week,” Young said, continuing the story. “We toured the campus and talked in his office for about an hour and it was a done deal.”

Just like that.

A 260-pound lineman at the time, Young said that after that visit he hung up the football pads for good and turned his full focus to baseball while losing 60 pounds over the next year.

Meanwhile, his commitment to the Chants never wavered.

“As the recruiting process began he really never considered going anywhere but Coastal,” Carroll recalled. “... I think the word got out pretty quickly that he was going to stay at home and play at Coastal so after he committed there were not a whole lot of people calling. That was his dream. That’s where he wanted to go.”

Young said he can’t count the number of Coastal Carolina baseball games he had attended growing up – “Hundreds probably,” he estimated. He recalls watching former Chants catcher Dock Doyle, another Conway High School product, crush home runs from 2005-08 and Carolina Forest High School product Keith Hardwick, whose parents are Young’s godparents, develop into a key contributor on the 2011 team.

“I wanted to be just like them,” Young said. “That stood out in my mind. I wanted to wear the uniforms they wore and hit home runs like Dock and play hard like Keith did.”

Meanwhile, word quickly spread to Gilmore that there was a player in town he needed to check out.

“I saw him at a lot of our games. His whole family would be there,” Gilmore said. “So it’s just been one of those things for him to kind of live out his dream, and it’s kind of a dream of mine too to have kids in Horry County look at us as an opportunity to go to [the College World Series in] Omaha just like they would if they went to South Carolina or Clemson.”

Breakthrough

That’s the goal for this Coastal Carolina team, which wasted no time this season vaulting the program back into the national rankings and back on the national radar after a rough 24-33 finish a year ago.

That trying 2014 season ended the Chants’ streak of seven straight NCAA regionals appearances, but this team seems poised to start a new one.

The Chants (37-18) won their first two games of the Big South tournament this week by a combined 18-0 margin over Charleston Southern and Winthrop to move on to the semifinals Friday. Young accounted for seven of those runs with a career-best five RBIs in the opening game Tuesday (while going 3-for-4 with a home run) and two more Wednesday on another long homer, this time off the scoreboard in right-centerfield of Gardner-Webb’s John Henry Moss Stadium.

After hitting just .237 with three homers in 52 games as a rookie last year, Young has truly enjoyed a breakout sophomore season and has been at his best of late while hitting .419 over the last 12 games.

“This year has been kind of crazy, going from hitting .220 or whatever I hit last year to hitting .300. I put in a lot of work in the offseason,” he said. “I knew to be the hitter I need to be, I needed to lay off low offspeed pitches and see the ball up more. And I think I’ve done a pretty good job this year of getting into hitter’s counts. I’ve got a few strikeouts, but I’ve gotten myself into hitter’s counts and it’s worked out in my favor this year. ...

“This year I wanted to make a statement that I did come here to play Coastal baseball.”

Gilmore lauds the strides Young has made in his mental game, in his approach and gameplan at the plate and the calm and confident body language he projects now.

“The great part is watching him evolve as a hitter,” Gilmore said. “He’s becoming a real hitter, not just a home run guy, but a guy that drives in runs, that grinds out at-bats, that really has an idea of what he’s trying to do.”

Young, listed at 6-foot, 215 pounds these days, acknowledges that he’s at least thought about the program’s career home run record, set at 50 by David Anderson from 2006-09, while admitting that’s a long ways off for him. And he insists he isn’t really focused on that at this point anyway.

He came to Coastal Carolina to be a part of the kind of teams he grew up watching, the ones that made the NCAA super regionals in 2008 and 2010 while knocking on the door of the College World Series.

At the very least, these Chants have taken a step back in that direction this year, and that means as much to Young as anything.

“Honestly, it’s amazing to be a part of a team, one of the first Coastal teams to actually have beaten Clemson and Carolina and Wake Forest and North Carolina State and all the ACC teams we played this year all in one season,” he said.

“It’s huge. It’s a privilege to play with the guys I get to play with. ... It’s just a bunch of guys who are good friends who get to go out and enjoy playing and enjoy watching each other do good.”

Just as he always envisioned.

This story was originally published May 22, 2015 at 10:55 AM with the headline "Former Conway HS slugger Young a natural fit at Coastal Carolina."