Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 11 No. 4 | March 2019

38 Inside Hokie Sports Continued from page 37 The coach recruited him, and Horanski decided to continue playing while pursuing his degree at the Nebraska-based school. He played in 18 games as a freshman, starting 11 at catcher. But he missed the 2016 season because of a freak injury while lifting weights three weeks into the fall semester. Horanski actually broke a bone in his back while doing squats. He fell to the ground, with what he described as a lightning bolt of pain shooting through his leg. Then everything went numb. He eventually wound up at the Nebraska Spine and Pain Center, and a team of specialists there performed a detailed operation that involved rods, screws and spacers. There was no way he would be able to return to the field in the spring—and maybe not ever. “The first thing you think about … I’m sitting in my dorm room crying, talking to my mom,” Horanski said. “I said, ‘For one, I can’t really walk right now, so that’s not very cool.’ As time started setting in, and I’m waiting for surgery, I’m like, ‘S--t, I’m not going to play anymore.’” Horanski, though, attacked his rehab. He trotted back onto the field in 10 months—a full two months ahead of doctors’ predictions. Only the field wasn’t actually at Creighton. During that process, he decided that Creighton and Omaha weren’t for him. He never felt comfortable with the situation in the baseball program, and he decided to leave. Transferring, though, required sitting out another season to meet the NCAA’s residency requirement, so rather than sit out another year, he decided to go the junior college route to get back on the field and prove himself as a Division I player. That decision led to a stop at Cisco College in Cisco, Texas—a two- hour drive west of Fort Worth. Cisco featured a good baseball program despite its remote location. “It was like, you take this exit, and Cisco is one road, and that’s kind of it,” Horanski said. “It was hot. There was a lot of sand. There were a lot of insects that I hadn’t seen before—scorpions and stuff like that. It was kind of a culture shock. It was like, ‘Wow, I went from the cold of the cold in Winnipeg, where I was born, then went to Vancouver and did the West Coast, then went to Nebraska, so I’m back in the center of everything. Then I go straight down to Texas, and now it’s frickin’ hot.” Few want to attend a junior college, but Horanski’s personality enabled him to make the most of it. The remote location of the school hindered social opportunities, so Horanski used any free time to make himself a better player. TCU and Alabama showed interest in him in the fall of 2016, but he got off to a slow start in the spring of 2017, and interest waned. Though he heated up in conference play, he received minimal interest, as most schools already had filled their recruiting classes. Horanski hoped to get drafted by a Major League Baseball team during the June amateur draft. Luke Horanski has been a top hitter and leader in the Hokies’ lineup during each of his two seasons in Blacksburg. , C.E.C. www.Pro f es s i m See our vintage d! See our vintage Ad!