When you consider that he’s gone from a 5-foot-10, 100-and-nothing pound high school sophomore first baseman to a 6-foot-8, 250-pound Friday night starting pitcher in Division I college baseball, you figure there’s got to be a story in there somewhere.
A story? More like quite a few stories.
Trey Cehajic will take the mound tonight for Tulane as the Green Wave takes on Harvard, but the road from Byrd High to Turchin Stadium has been anything but typical.
Let’s throw a few nuggets out there –
- When Covid-19 took place in 2020, Cehajic was still in high school and while many were crushed by the cancellation of the season, it may have been the biggest break he ever got.
- He is Tulane’s No. 1 pitcher but never threw a single pitch when he was in high school.
- Cehajic turned down an opportunity to realize a dream and play – and probably start as a first baseman – in Division I baseball right out of high school but turned it down because he’d given his word to a junior college.
- He ended up at Tulane because most of the major colleges who had been recruiting him out of junior college literally stopped taking his calls.
- Plus, Cehajic could throw a complete game in the amount of time it would take to go over his medical history.
“Coming into this season, it was my goal to be the Friday night starter,” Cehajic said, who was a starter in 13 games last year for the Green Wave. “I wasn’t promised anything, but I was going to do everything I could.”
If that last quote doesn’t sum up his journey, nothing does.
Cehajic battled injuries while at Byrd, missing his entire junior year, but fought back to make it on the field for his senior year during the fall. But something wasn’t right.
“I never did get an MRI, but I knew something was wrong,” he said.
Yes, there was something wrong – a UCL tear, which means that those two words no player wants to hear soon to follow: Tommy John. “That was a pretty big blow and upsetting, but I worked hard to make it back for opening night (in the spring) as a DH,” he said.
The arrival of Covid a few weeks later “was a blessing in disguise,” said Cehajic, because he was able to continue his rehab at an easier pace.
Given his injury history, he knew the junior college route was his best options, but since they weren’t knocking down his door, he took matters into his own hands by contacting every junior college he could find, even if he had never heard of them. “I literally looked up the top 25 Juco rankings and started sending emails,” he said.
Now comes the long-story-short part of this journey. So let’s make it even shorter – an amazing set of circumstances mixed in with the right place at the right time got him on the radar of McClellan Junior College, which is always one of the top programs at that level.
“I ended up talking to the coach and loved everything I heard from him,” Cehajic said. “So I committed right there.”
Meanwhile, through another set of circumstances, a spot had opened at Nicholls State to potentially be the starter at first base. A chance to play Division I baseball was now within his grasp.
Here’s all you need to know about Trey Cehajic – he turned it down.
Why?
Because he had already made a commitment to McClellan. “I need to honor that,” he told Byrd coach Greg Williams.
“I tell that story to my players today,” Williams said. “Here’s a guy who could have taken the easy route but he knew that wouldn’t make him the best version of himself. And the best version was at a junior college that 90 percent of the people in Shreveport had never heard of. He bet on himself.”
Never far away from his next injury, Cehajic then began battling a back injury that wouldn’t go away. An MRI didn’t reveal anything, but it was hurting to walk or run and his back would begin spasming. He was sent to a doctor in Dallas, who just so happened to be former Shreveporter Drew Dossett, who spotted that Cehajic had been misdiagnosed.
After undergoing another procedure, Cehajic had to take 12 weeks off from any baseball-related activities. “Just be a couch potato,” he said.
Once he got back, he was in a battle for the first base spot and was headed for another year off via redshirt. One day, he was playing catch with another first baseman and were doing imitations of other pitchers. One of his coaches spotted that and later asked him if he’d like to throw a bullpen after a road trip.
“I thought he was joking,” Cehajic says.
Cehajic isn’t the first player to be turned into a pitcher by accident and won’t be the last, but after that, everything began to fall into place.
He spent three years at McClennan and was recruited by LSU, Baylor and Oklahoma. But when one his visits got cancelled, things began to go south with that plan.
But Jay Uhlman, who had coached in the junior college ranks but was now at Tulane, got in touch with Cehajic to ask if he would be interested.
He didn’t have to ask twice.
Interestingly, Cehajic isn’t the only local player who has taken the route from McClellan JC to being a Friday night starter in Division I. William Soignier, who played at Loyola and was one of Cehajic’s roommates, took the mound last Friday for the Bradley Braves against Bethune-Cookman.
Cehajic’s first start of the season was on the road at Loyola Marymount as the Green Wave looks to improve on last year’s fifth place finish in the American Athletic Conference.
“I’m really not chasing anything,” Cehajoc said. “I just want to have a healthy season and help my team get as many wins as possible. Especially on Friday nights.”
Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com
