Jonathan Segovia will be a man of many hats Sunday.
He’ll wear his Vulcans baseball cap one final time at Wong Stadium, and figuratively speaking he never takes off his Keaau Cougars cap.
Produced in Puna and refined at UH-Hilo, Segovia also will try on a speaker’s cap for size during the Vuls’ senior day ceremonies after Sunday’s home finale against Hawaii Pacific. First pitch is at noon.
“I’m the senior who’s been here the longest and I know the local players,” he said. “This means so much to me. I can thank everyone who has supported our program.”
He’ll speak for all 10 seniors – Phillip Steering, Kila Zuttermeister, Morgan West, Edwin Stanberry, Reese Kato, Deric Valoroso, Cole Nakachi, Drew Ichikawa, Edison Sakata are the others – and he says he’ll speak from the heart.
“I’ll take it as it comes,” Segovia said.
Why stop with what’s worked all along?
Competitively speaking, playing for Keaau, which takes its lumps against East Hawaii’s powerhouses, to UHH, which has to take on the better-funded Pacific West Conference powers, is never the easy route.
“It just fires us up,” Segovia said. “We play like we have nothing to lose and that we have a whole lot to prove.”
From the underdog Cougars to the undergo Vulcans, he’s transformed himself from a walk-on in 2013 to a scholarship player in 2015 to almost becoming a .300 hitter in 2017 to sporting a robust a .372 average entering senior day.
“He finds a way to get it done,” said Steering, who knows a thing or two about getting things done, “and if he doesn’t he is very disappointed in himself, and he makes sure in his next opportunity he’s going to try his best to get it done.
“He’s a grinder, and he’s a hard competitor.”
Segovia’s spiked his average so high that – after collecting six hits, including his first home run Saturday in a doubleheader split against the Sharks – he’s reached Steering territory (.368).
“Grinding on our team just means working hard,” Segovia said. “We all work hard, because it took a lot to get here.”
While Segovia is one of the feel-good stories of the senior class, Steering is the gold standard and one of the best players the program has produced.
The first baseman’s 2018 average won’t touch the PacWest-leading .421 he belted as a junior, but Steering’s 10 home runs are a UHH single-season record.
More important, the Vulcans (20-24, 12-16 PacWest) are as competitive as they’ve been in some time and still have a chance to avoid a losing season with four wins to finish the season.
“I would call it a relief,” Steering said. “In past seasons, we’ve been pretty good, we just couldn’t finish.
“A lot of people thought they had reasons of why we couldn’t finish. I don’t think I could ever pinpoint one down. I just think we have a group of guys who like to compete.”
Steering, a 2014 graduate of El Toro High School in Lake Forest, Calif., hit .227 as a freshman and has since added approximately 35 pounds to his 6-foot-1 frame.
His career arc is a prototypical one for coach Kallen Miyataki, who knows he has to develop players in bunches in lieu of bringing in a highly touted recruiting class.
“I would recommend this program to someone who is a good baseball player who has been overlooked their whole lives and knows the game well,” Steering said. “If he wants the opportunity, this is a great conference to compete.”
He’s set to graduate and has no intentions of putting down the bat anytime soon.
His Plan A is to get drafted, but if that fails Plan B is to play in the Southern California Collegiate Baseball League this summer.
Plan C is to never give up.
“I don’t see myself not playing,” he said, “and I want everybody to tell me that I’m done.”
“If the draft doesn’t work out, just do my best to try and play some sort of pro baseball, whether that be overseas, independently, anything,” Steering said.
“People mention coaching and grad programs, whatever. I just figure I’ll do that when I’m done, done. I want everybody to have to tell me no.”
His degree is in communications, but in a way’s he a double major considering all the lessons he’s learned during four years of Vulcans baseball.
“This place makes you deal with a lot of adversity,” Steering said. “This place really makes you focus, and it basically got to the point where excuses are unacceptable to me. It’s kind of a find-a-way-mentality.”
Segovia is a double major (communications and kinesiology) and he’s been accepted into a grad program at UHH with no plans of leaving Puna anytime soon.
“The reason I chose to play here was to play in front of my family,” he said. “My family has always been my number one fan.”
As he’s giving his speech Sunday, he’ll be able to look up see all who have inspired him, including Keaau coach Herb Yasuhara.
“He opened my eyes my junior year when he told me I was college-ready,” Segovia said.
He’ll also be sure to catch a glimpse of parents Nora Segovia and Justin Musselman, stepfather John Harvest, and perhaps most of all, he’ll look for grandfather Fred Segovia.
“He’s the whole reason (I’m here),” Segovia said, “He never missed a game ever since T-ball.”
