Ruairi O’Connor always dreamed of playing for Florida State, but he never dreamed he’d be doing it now.
Instead of his senior baseball season for Oak Park, O’Connor is playing his freshman season for FSU.
He has swapped prom and graduation for macroeconomics and a spot as a part-time starter for one of college baseball’s powers.
“It’s a great thing to be able to do,” he said.
His decision to do it set up an intriguing, though not altogether surprising, scenario in which the needs of a college team and an athlete collided with those of a high school team.
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For years, pro sports teams have nibbled prematurely at the colleges’ talent pools, and colleges now are increasingly doing likewise to high schools.
A year ago, for instance, about a dozen football players enrolled for the second semester at Big Ten universities in order to go through spring practice.
Those athletes had, of course, finished their prep football careers, but some would have competed in winter and spring sports if they hadn’t departed early.
This phenomenon is unlikely to happen frequently enough to harm high school sports.
The real harm will come if a teenager isn’t ready to make the jump, or if a college coach pressures him to make it.
Early exits apparently are rare in baseball. Mike Martin said O’Connor is the first player who has arrived this way in his 25 seasons as head coach at Florida State and that he knew of it happening elsewhere once.
Martin asked O’Connor to enroll ahead of schedule after he didn’t like the looks of his depth chart early last November.
The offer surprised O’Connor, who wasn’t sure at first if he wanted to accept it or even if he could.
Oak Park officials made it possible by allowing him to wrap up his semester requirements by Christmas break rather than in mid-January, a necessity if he was to enroll at FSU in early January for the second semester.
A minor schedule change took care of the rest.
O’Connor decided he wanted to make the jump but didn’t say yes until he was sure he’d get a chance to play.
“I told coach Martin I didn’t want to sit on the bench and waste a year of eligibility,” said O’Connor, who is named for a 12th Century Irish king. “He said I’d have a shot to win a position at a couple of positions.
“I felt the advantages far outweighed the disadvantages. It would show them I really do care about them, and I would get a leg up on all the freshmen coming in next fall.”
O’Connor’s father, Pat, said there were a few “soul-searching conversations” at home but that he and his wife, Irene, believed Ruairi was mentally and physically prepared for college.
“He was ready to do this,” Pat O’Connor said. “He felt this was the opportunity of a lifetime.”
O’Connor’s parents both attended Florida State, and Ruairi grew up a huge FSU fan.
His goal was to play football there, but that began to change when he hit .458 as a high school sophomore and got an FSU scholarship offer the following summer at Martin’s baseball camp.
“I was just stunned,” O’Connor said of the offer. “It has always been my dream. I actually almost felt like it was a dream.
“It was one of the best moments of my life.”
Martin’s gain became Oak Park coach Chris Ledbetter’s loss once O’Connor decided to leave early.
Ledbetter advised his star to stay at Oak Park, saying, “Your senior season is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.” But he insisted he doesn’t blame O’Connor for leaving.
He did, however, blame Florida State for making the offer in the first place.
“I was a little turned off by the message it sends where Florida State says we don’t have a player to play this specific position, so we just dip into the high schools and ask a kid to skip his senior season,” Ledbetter said. “It almost made me feel what we do is unimportant, and I won’t let anyone tell me this high school program isn’t important.
“If it’s better for the individual, fine, but don’t make what we do seem anything less.”
Martin said he doesn’t blame Ledbetter for feeling that way, adding that O’Connor’s exit is a rare case of a team’s need intersecting with a recruit willing and able to make the move.
“I’d be miffed if I were his high school coach,” Martin said. “It just so happened we had a strong need and he had a strong desire to come to Florida State at this time.
“It takes a special guy. I wouldn’t be comfortable if Ruairi were not as mature as he is. There’s no question it’s a big jump for him.”
O’Connor arrived at school Dec. 29 and moved into a townhouse with three other players.
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He worried about how he would fit in on the team but said he was accepted immediately.
“We are just one family, pretty much,” he said. “That’s probably the best part of being here, that relationship with teammates.”
Baseball has been a tougher adjustment.
O’Connor, a right-handed hitter, has played in 24 of 33 games, with 11 starts and a .250 batting average, two home runs and 14 RBIs in 52 at-bats.
He starts in right field–a new position for him–against left-handed pitchers and pinch-hits against lefty relievers.
“It’s a lot different than high school, but it has been great,” he said. “I’m definitely happy with my decision, definitely satisfied with how it has turned out.”
He has, he acknowledged, had pangs of homesickness, and he had guilt pangs when Oak Park lost two of its first four games.
“It was definitely the hardest part of everything,” he said of leaving the Huskies.
Ledbetter said he gave O’Connor his blessing so he wouldn’t feel guilty.
“It would be tough enough for him to adjust,” said Ledbetter, who tracks O’Connor’s progress on the Internet. “I didn’t want him wondering if the people who were with him the last three years were bitter.
“We weren’t. I told him, `We’ll always pull for you.'”
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