Records are cool and firsts are just as great.
The Kansas baseball team achieved a bunch of both during its recently wrapped, incredibly exhilarating season, which ended with a tough loss to Oklahoma in one of eight NCAA Super Regionals.
One day after the Jayhawks’ season came to a cruel end, I was asked on a local radio show how I thought this team would be remembered.
I think the answer is a little bit different for whoever is asked the question.
To some, it was those numbers and records, like Tyson LeBlanc’s 25 home runs, Dom Voegele’s single-season strikeout mark, the team’s overall home run record and others that will be what they remember.
To others, it’ll be the experiences that stand out when they think back on the 2026 Kansas baseball run. Three championships, 45 wins, a mountain of amazing comeback wins and those back-to-back weekends in late-May and early June that transformed Hoglund Ballpark into one of the hottest spots in college baseball.
Some will remember the continued ascent under Dan Fitzgerald — Perfect Game’s National College Baseball Coach of the Year — and how this program, no matter how many players it replaces from one year to the next, keeps putting an impressive, productive and incredibly likable winner on the field.
And still more people will remember the surge in fan support, how people packed Hoglund, how the support — both on game day and in the wallet — reached an elite level and how, for the first time in a while, and quite possibly the most convincing time ever, Kansas fans made it known, loud and clear, that they were interested in getting behind this group and rallying to help KU become a baseball school, too.
While I’ll always remember all of that — how could you not after a run like this one? — my answer came down to the bigger picture of what these guys accomplished and, more accurately, what they represented.
In short, they reminded us all that college athletics as we once knew and loved it can and does still exist.
In an era when NIL and the transfer portal produce 6- and 7-figure college basketball and football athletes, whether they’ve earned it or not, this team full of mostly former juco baseball players who came together to create magic while embracing the grind along the way, was both pure magic and a breath of fresh air.
They played for each other. They loved each other. They understood the value of what it meant to represent KU and Jayhawks everywhere and they showed beyond question how much they appreciated everything they got.
Every win. Every round of applause. Every at-bat. Every piece of gear. Every training tool. Every opportunity to show up to the ballpark and play the game they’ve loved since they could walk.
It’s not just talk. These guys appreciated all of it. And, in a lot of ways, that’s what made the ending hurt as much as it did. For these guys, this whole season was always about so much more than a final score, good or bad.
There was, of course, a lot more good than bad for Fitzgerald’s fourth KU team.
Trophies, T-Shirts, smiles, laughs and moments that will be talked about forever.
Their run from a 10-6 record to 37-11 and in control of the Big 12 race was as impressive as anything we’ve seen in recent years at KU. In any sport. And it was that stretch that jumpstarted the belief in these guys — and especially their fans — that they really could achieve special things.
Boy, did they. Behind largely anonymous names and personalities, guys that so many KU fans did eventually get to know as well as Bill Self’s starting five, these Jayhawks captured the heart and spirit of both KU fans and the community as a whole.
And they did it without trying to do anything other than be who they are.
Fitzgerald is the first KU baseball coach in school history to win national coach of the year honors. LeBlanc is KU’s first first-team All-American in 20 years. And, as much as KU fans won’t want to hear it, a bunch of these guys are going to be drafted in mid-July.
That likely means that next year’s team will look quite a bit different than this year’s team.
New names to learn. New faces to get familiar with. New stars and new record setters.
You know what won’t be new though?
The way they play, how hard they compete and what they care about.
Even without knowing them, I’m willing to bet that won’t change.
It’s been a constant of Dan Fitzgerald baseball at KU and finding players who fit into it is the top priority for Fitz and his assistant coaches, Jon Coyne, Brandon Scott and Tyler Hancock.
They haven’t missed yet.
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