While we’re on the baseball subject, the Cougars said goodbye to an assistant coach as Steven Trout accepted the head coaching job at Texarkana College this week. Trout, who is just 26, will be making his head coaching debut with the Bulldogs, whom he played for in 2004 and 2005 before transferring to TCU. Trout started his coaching career in 2010 as a volunteer assistant at Texas State before coming to UH to join Todd Whitting’s staff.
Whitting spoke highly of Trout and said he’s not in a rush to replace the position. Whitting said he hopes to have someone in Trout’s place by the end of the summer.
Trout said that while this is a “dream job” for his head coaching debut, he ultimately would like a head coaching job at a Division I school. But the post he just accepted is a “perfect start” in working towards that goal.
“This was one of my dream jobs – to coach at a place where I played and went to a (JUCO) World Series,” Trout said.
He also mentioned that he plans to take a lot of what he learned from his playing days at TCU and his year with Whitting at UH and apply it to his program.
“To be honest, I’ll take the entire thing from the system to how we run our pitching staff, teach our hitters, weight room, how hard we play, pretty much everything,” Trout said. “The biggest thing is getting the running game installed and offense installed. I told my players already, if you watch Houston play this year and TCU play in Omaha a couple of years ago, that’s what you’re going to look like if you play for Texarkana College.”
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The Sporting News released its full preseason college football rankings this week all the way from No. 1 to 120 and the Houston Cougars came in at No. 31. Rice, as my esteemed colleague Joseph Duarte noted, is near the bottom at No. 101.
Other C-USA teams came in as follows: UCF (41), Southern Miss (55), Tulsa (68), SMU (69), UAB (86), Marshall (89), East Carolina (97), Tulane (104), UTEP (105), Memphis (117).
UH’s non-conference opponents ranked as such: UCLA (84), Louisiana Tech (94) and North Texas (98). Georgia State is an FCS program and thus is not ranked in this poll.
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Sophomore golfer Jesse Droemer qualified for the field of 64 at the U.S. Amateur Public Links Championships in Bandon, Ore., before being eliminated in the second round of the match-play portion of the tournament, falling to Daniel Miernicki 6 and 5. Sophomore Curtis Reed also entered the tournament but did not qualify for the final 64.
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It’s camp season these days on campus and there have been plenty of youngsters roaming the Athletics/Alumni Center in recent weeks. There is still a chance for interested campers to join the fray.
For baseball, there are camps left July 6-7, July 10-14 (overnight camp) and Aug. 6-7. For info and registration, go to CougarBaseballCamp.com.
There’s one women’s basketball camp left, Aug. 3-6 for sixth graders through high school seniors. And the registration fee has been slashed from $200 to $125 through July 29. Check www.t-bucbasketballcamps.com for info.
More camps remain in July for soccer, volleyball, and one more for football as well.
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Current UH junior diver Julia Lonnegren and former Cougar Anastasia Pozdniakova are heading to the FINA World Championships later this month.
The competition, which starts on July 16 in Shanghai, gives the pair a chance to qualify for Olympic bids for their native countries, Russia (Pozdniakova) and Sweden (Lonnegren).
Pozdniakova has two Olympic silver medals to her name from the 2008 games and earned a bronze in the 3-meter synchronized dive in the 2009 FINA World Championships. Lonnegren will be making her debut in the competition, entering in a pair of 1-meter dives.
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UH senior pitcher Donna Bourgeois signed a contract with the Chicago Bandits of the National Pro Fastpitch league this week and will join the team this weekend. Bourgeois is coming off a 17-6 year with a 1.67 ERA in which she earned Conference USA Newcomer of the Year honors after transferring from Louisiana-Lafayette. She’ll make her pitching debut this weekend for the Bandits, who are 7-3.
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The soccer team added a sixth signee for its 2011 recruiting class on Thursday with the addition of Toronto native Jerusalem Groves.
Groves, who goes by Jerry, played high school ball in Canada but also played for the Jamaican U17 national team and full national team.
