As you probably all know by now, Boise State’s upstart baseball team—the same team that started, but didn’t finish, it’s first season in 40 years was unceremoniously axed last week to save budget space due to projected financial shortfalls due to Covid-19. The painfully short-lived baseball team played just 14 games before the pandemic kiboshed their season and now the team was told to pound sand (over a Zoom call, no less) by current Boise State AD Curt Apsey. To add insult to injury, they were also told to not bother trying to drum up funds to keep the team afloat. So, now as most of the team have reluctantly placed their names in the transfer portal (with my personal favorite, Joey Yorke already finding a new home at Cal Poly) the team is throwing a hail mary (or the baseball equivalent) to try to save the team. Pitcher Gavin Gorrell posted a GoFundMe page a short time ago on his Twitter page along with a video featuring most of the players and coach Gary Van Tol imploring supporters to make their voices heard and pocketbooks felt...

So you don’t have to parse Gorrell’s twitter account for their fundraiser link, it’s right here. So far, they’ve raised $16,000...probably a drop in the bucket compared to the proposed $3M that Apsey stated the athletic department was looking to trim (the baseball and S&D team are said to demand about $2.3M to operate), but it looks like they are just getting started. Hey, we all know that Kustra wasn’t really willing to sit at the table with the aggrieved wrestling fans after that program was cut (ironically, for baseball)...but Kustra is retired now and we don’t really know if Curt Apsey will...well, play ball or not if the team is able to flash some dough. Besides, I really think this team can be contenders in short order...a lot of the guys have been together for a few years now and all seem to have a quiet reverence for Boise and Van Tol. Hey, it’s worth a shot, right?

Of course, the swimming and diving team was put on the chopping block as well and have also decided they’d rather not go down without a fight. As of last night, KTVB’s Jay Tust reported that they’ve already rallied over $120k in 24 hours to save both the beloved squads and have almost another $25k in pledges. If you’d like to commit some resources or simply share the swimming and diving team’s efforts, you can do that HERE (I believe this link is for both sports). Again, if you don’t want to see either of these sports ran out of town (swimming and diving has 3 MWC titles to their name) it sure can’t hurt.

GO BRONCOS!