He looks around at his teammates and at the 2,500-seat stadium — which held up to 4,312 Hoosier fans against Stanford last May — that he now calls home.
Nolden knows he made the right choice becoming a Hoosier.
“It was an easy decision when I came on my visit, even when we were back playing at Sembower,” Nolden said. “You look out here today, even at a practice like this, and you definitely realize you made the right decision.”
Nolden, a fifth-year senior, committed to become a Hoosier before the 2011 season. A season in which he redshirted and watched the Hoosiers miss the Big Ten Tournament.
That season at Sembower Field, Nolden and his teammates would have to rake the field until sundown. He would play in a stadium and on a field more comparable to a high school facility than a major college program.
But that was what Nolden needed, he said. Doing groundwork until the sun went down humbled him. He says sometimes he has to bring the younger guys on the team back to Earth.
That season, and the seasons after, helped Nolden grow as a player. He said he needed to redshirt a year because he wasn’t ready for college baseball.
“The way this program has grown, I think I’ve grown just as much as a player myself,” Nolden said. “So I think it’s a pretty good comparison with how this program’s grown with how my career has gone.”
His third year in Bloomington, as a sophomore in eligibility, was the breakthrough. With then-sophomores Kyle Schwarber and Sam Travis as Hoosiers, with then-juniors Joey DeNato and Dustin DeMuth also leading the way, the Hoosiers were different.
Nolden was part of a team that won its first 18 games in 2013. He was the lead-off hitter for a team that won a Big Ten Tournament title and hosted a ?regional.
Then came two moments he said he cherishes most from his time in cream and crimson.
The first was after then-sophomore Tim O’Connor caught a DJ Stewart line drive. He remembers dog-piling with his teammates to celebrate beating Florida State in a super-regional to advance to IU’s first ever College World Series.
“To be able to dog-pile on a field like that against a program like that is just an unbelievable feeling and is just a testament to how far this program has come,” Nolden said.
The next came a week later in Omaha.
The College World Series had just wrapped up its first game and 27,000 fans were settling in for another, a matchup between IU and Louisville.
The first batter to step in the box at TD Ameritrade Park – Will Nolden.
“That’s the kind of image you picture going through workouts to help get you through workouts, because that’s every college baseball’s player dream,” Nolden said. “It was just unbelievable.”
Nolden walked in that at-bat. In the third inning, he drew another leadoff walk, this time coming around to score IU’s second run of a 2-0 win.
If you had told Nolden he’d be batting leadoff in the College World Series when he was a high school senior at Lawrence North High School in Indianapolis, he said he would have laughed in your face.
At that point, coaches were talking about Big Ten Championships, of which Nolden has won two. They weren’t talking about the College World ?Series.
Now, as Nolden peers out to the right-center field wall at Bart Kaufman Field. As he stares at the reminder of what he calls his most memorable moment of a Hoosier, he wants to go back.
“I’d be lying if I didn’t want to be dog-piling in Omaha this year.”
