Mr. Garland will update you on the s- individual schools and zones.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair.

Through you, I think it is important for us to recognize that some-- from time to time, we will have promotions, resignations, um, make internal arrangements that will result in a position becoming vacant for a short period of time.

And that is exactly what has happened, um, with this particular, um, summary or this scenario here.

Um, the vacancy for Clement Howell High School, I'll start with Clement Howell High School, is a vacancy for a visual arts teacher.

Fortunately, we were able to employ that teacher.

He-- That, that position is currently filled.

They are still a tier one school in baseball NIL, and I had a guest on not long ago talking about Joji Insante from the Diamond Ducks, talking about everything they do there, and this is, this is an example of the work that they are doing paying off in a, in a big way.

Yeah, you know, even, you can throw in a guy like Brooklyn Mabius too, going to Mississippi State.

Like, that's another guy where you're like, "Hey, man, this was a guy that we thought we were gonna be a talent here at home." They're, they're, they're trying to build this thing up, right? And they gotta get to that point, but they're not gonna match SEC right away.

They're not gonna match them right now.

We know that the amount of money the SEC's spending is ridiculous.

And, and the numbers are crazy for college baseball.

It would probably make people blush to know how much money is being spent in college baseball in the SEC.

Honestly, Mark, I'm sitting here wondering why this guy isn't in the Major League Baseball draft.

For them to do that, do you think it will require a greater NIL commitment than what they currently have? Do you think that their budget, based on what you've been told, is good enough to get them to the College World Series?

I think it's right there.

Honestly, like everybody I've talked to inside the program and my conversations with the coaching staff and everybody around the program.

And it's talking to all these other schools, you know, I cover all 309 division one baseball schools.

They're right there.

They're in that top 1% of all these teams.

And you've seen it three super regionals is nothing to God.

So what are your impressions of Woz and what you see him doing with the program?

father son you know go out and have a catch and everything else there's a lot of great uh parallels to what's going on here but none are better than what's going on at north carolina can you speak to that a little bit for the people that might not know the storylines that go on with north carolina and their team

yeah i mean i think the biggest thing is like eric paulson whose dad wanted him to transfer and wanted to be a tar heel and passed away this off season and he's been able to be there and be a part of this and scott forbes has kind of known that the whole time he's gonna have to take over kind of his father figure and It's been a big deal for him.

And Eric Paulson, tremendous hitter, tremendous player, great young man there for North Carolina.

It just meant a lot.

And then on the other side of it, Jackson Willis, who's a ballplayer for Oklahoma, is a first-time father.

So he had his kid at the game, which was pretty cool to see that on Father's Day, to see those two going back and forth in that ballgame.

It really just means a lot.

So what strategy do you think changes for both managers in those dugouts when you have that type of, I know this is it, I got to lay everything out? Does it change?

What have been your biggest takeaways?

I got to say, West Virginia fans traveled.

That was fantastic to see their first trip there to the World Series.

And those fans showed up.

I mean, I know I got video of Country Road on the field in between the players and the fans.

It was pretty cool.

Like, that was pretty powerful stuff to see that kind of fan base show up for their guys.

Freshmen are supposed to be afraid of the moment, and they have three of them, and none of them are.

True.

Honestly, like, those three guys were ridiculous this season.

I think what it came down to is that you saw what Mason Edwards did against excellent competition, right? Every single weekend they were playing tough teams.

What he did against really tough teams, and going up there and facing these guys and, and being successful, not losing a single start, like, that's tough to do anyway in college baseball.

That's really hard.

You may have one bad outing.

Even his bad outings, he went out of it and just competed for his guys and didn't lose a single game.

Mark, did you feel that, or were there specific tools that really jumped out to you for him?

... uh, because of, you know, the NIL and transfer portal and, and people going and grabbing a ring?

I think that there's a lot of reasons for it, but we are.

I mean, here's the thing.

This is gonna be the third year in a row where we have an entire new field of eight teams in Omaha.

That has never happened in the history of the field.

We have never seen it where we've had two years back to back.

Now we're having three years where not a single team has repeated back into Omaha.

But it seems like the staff, um, overall is, is giving themselves a lot of chances to succeed and, and that should be able to go back to the coaching staff, I would think, wouldn't it?

But now, back at number five.

Yeah, I mean, when you look at teams and what they're returning and what they added in, they had to be in this top five, right? This is a very talented team.

They felt very disappointed to win the SEC regular season title last year and then get bounced at home by UTSA.

They felt slighted.

They felt like maybe they just didn't have the right pieces in the right places, right? So they go out and they go get the best catcher in the transfer portal in Carson Tinney from Notre Dame.

instantly adds offense, instantly adds ability and skill for them.

Just a ridiculous guy to go be able to pick up.

Rock Cholowski and...