When they couldn’t shake the anguish of parallel cases of heartache last summer, Link and JT Jarrett didn’t even try to find the words to console each other.
Instead, they made their way over to an empty Frank Eck Stadium on Notre Dame’s campus, and father pitched to son in a batting cage. Hours on end. Day after day.
Without coaching or preaching.
Until they remembered why they fell so hard for baseball in the first place and became more determined than ever to have baseball love them back again.
Friday night in Raleigh, N.C., the rest of the college baseball world gets to see simultaneously the monsters they helped create in one another this offseason, when No. 3 Notre Dame (9-1) and coach Link Jarrett open ACC play against No. 25 NC State (9-4) and second baseman JT Jarrett for a three-game series.
First pitch for the series opener is 6 p.m. ET. The game will be televised on the ACC Network.
“It’s not really hard or stressful to play against my dad,” said JT, who did so for the first time last April in South Bend, Ind., going 2-for-10 at the plate and the Wolfpack losing two of three.
“What it is, is weird — hearing my dad’s voice when I’m playing in the sense that he’s coaching, not in the stands like a dad. I think it stresses everyone else out in the family, though.
”I think the only difference this time around is I won’t get to have dinner at home with my family on the Thursday night before the series. My mom’s lasagna is really good.”
What’s really good this time around is JT, a 5-foot-10, 165-pound fifth-year senior whose .593 batting average — up from .251 in 2021 — would be second in the nation if he had played in enough games to qualify for the national stats.
JT missed five games with an undisclosed injury before returning Tuesday to go 3-for-5 in a 13-5 win at UNC-Greensboro, the team his dad used to coach before coming to Notre Dame in 2020. The Wolfpack were 1-4 in the games in which JT was sidelined.
Just 21 miles away in Elon, N.C., on Tuesday, Link coached his Irish to a 11-3 romp over the host Elon Phoenix in the final pre-ACC tune-up.
“I’m his biggest supporter,” JT said of Link. “Other than my own team, I’m pulling for Notre Dame.”
Both teams were easy for anyone to pull for last season.
Notre Dame, picked to finish last in the ACC’s Coastal Division, finished 34-13 overall and with the best league record (25-10) in either division by 4 ½ games. The Irish then swept through their own NCAA Tournament regional by a combined score of 50-5 in three games.
In the Super Regional round, ND fell one game short of a College World Seres berth, losing to seventh seed and eventual national champ Mississippi State two games to one on the road in a series so full of what-ifs, Link Jarrett couldn’t let them go.
“On the flight home especially, I wanted to think about the landscape of where we were a year before and spin it in a positive way,” Link said. “But I was very disappointed and kind of disgusted with how it played out, and our guys felt the exact same way.
“They weren’t happy about how it ended, and I think they recognized how close we were and how critical every pitch of every one of those games can be. So we brought that fire into this season.”
NC State, meanwhile, was supposed to be good in 2021, and they weren’t initially, stumbling to a 1-8 start in ACC play. The Wolfpack had begun to gain some traction in mid-April when Notre Dame beat them two out of three.
A 17-4 surge followed in the next 21 games heading into a Super Regional matchup with the NCAA Tourney’s No. 1 seed, Arkansas. The host Razorbacks crushed the Wolfpack 21-2 in game one, then lost the next two games by one run each as NC State crashed the College World Series in Omaha, Neb.
The Wolfpack spent the week in the Bracket 1 winner’s bracket, reeling off three straight wins, including a 1-0 conquest of 2019/defending champ Vanderbilt (there was no 2020 tourney due to COVID-19).
One win away from playing Mississippi State for the title, COVID hit the Wolfpack hard. They lost 3-1 to Vandy in a game in which only 13 of their 27 players were available. The next day, instead of the Wolfpack playing that winner-take-all game with the Commodores, tourney officials sent NC State home.
“I went straight to South Bend and spent two weeks playing baseball with my dad,” JT said. “His players were all gone, and I didn’t know anybody in South Bend. It was hard to meet people with COVID and everything.
“But there was something about it that felt right that it was just me and him. We’d been doing that since I was 5 years old. Training with him isn’t probably what some people think. It’s more just like our hobby is baseball. Some fathers and sons go fishing. We do this.”
And they did it again later in the summer before JT headed off to school and again during Christmas break.
“Now that I’m months away from Omaha and how it ended, I realize how close-knit our team was last year and how much we loved each other,” JT said. “That was the reason we were good.
“Yeah, we had talent, but that team was special for several different reasons. Obviously, there’s nothing I can do about the way it ended now, other than be a leader on this team and play my best every day really.”
NC State’s best through 13 games in 2022 is as an offensive force. The Wolfpack at midweek ranked ninth nationally out of 293 Division I teams in batting average (.337), 17th in home runs per game (1.69), 10th in slugging (.555), 10th in scoring (10.4), but 100th in ERA (.438) and 234th in fielding percentage (.956).
They have a thumper in the middle of their lineup, reminiscent of Niko Kavadas last season for the Irish. Freshman Tommy White is second in the nation in home runs (0.75) and first in RBIs per game (2.46).
The Irish counter with the nation’s best team ERA (1.41) and the nation’s second-best fielding defense (0.992).
There’s no Kavadas, nor a convincing replica, this season. Notre Dame is 26th in scoring (9.3 runs), but it’s not been consistent. The Irish are 89th in home runs per game (1.0), but eighth in triples (0.70).
“I don’t know their players, but Dad talks to the family about what good guys they are,” JT said. “It’s kind of like what turned our team around last year, though. There’s obviously a closeness and a lot of belief and buy-in in what they’re doing.”
Interestingly, Link never recruited JT out of high school, nor did JT volunteer.
“We never really even talked about it,” JT said. “It kind of went without being said, really. I didn’t really want to be the coach’s son at UNCG – not that it’s a bad thing. I just didn’t think that was for me, and same thing for him. We never really said that. It just kind of happened.
“And (NC State associate head) coach (Chris) Hart was really the only coach that offered me and gave me an opportunity. So I’m thankful for him and this opportunity. When I got here, I didn’t think I was good enough to be here, to be honest.
“It was a rough first year. I finally just had to decide to put my feet in the dirt and get to it, but I’m happy with where I am now, I’m happy with where we are as a program.”
So is Notre Dame — 54-16 since Link Jarrett’s arrival including an 11-2 record in the truncated 2020 season. ND’s NCAA Tournament appearance in his only full season in South Bend, Ind., so far was just the second since coach Paul Mainieri left for LSU after the 2006 season.
Success wouldn’t be nearly as fun, though, without the intermittent father-son time for Link.
And next time they get together to share their “hobby,” Link figures they’ll get back to talking baseball as well as playing it.
“He’s a very advanced thinker of the game,” Link said. “When he was younger, I always wanted him to initiate technical things that we talk about, because I didn’t want home to feel like an extension of practice and games.
“I wanted him to have that separation. So if he wanted to bring it up when he was younger, then I would jump in. But I didn’t hound him.
“As he’s gotten older, we have talked more baseball. He’s played a lot of games and there have been a lot of postseasons, and he knows what’s going on.
"I enjoy every single minute of it.”
NOTRE DAME vs. NC STATE
Friday, March 11 | 6 p.m. ET
Saturday, March 12 | 2 p.m. ET
Sunday, March 13 | 1 p.m. ET
Probable Starters
LHP Aidan Tyrell (3-0, 0.56 ERA) vs. RHP Sam Highfill (1-1, 5.02 ERA)
LHP John Michael Bertrand (3-0, 0.90 ERA) vs. RHP Matt Willadsen (0-0, 5.02 ERA)
RHP Austin Temple (2-0, 1.59 ERA) vs. LHP David Harrison (2-1, 2.81 ERA)
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