Menu
Friends For Life, Part III: Small-town guys fare well away from home
Thursday, July 7, 2022
Bernie High School baseball coach Marcus Massey (left) and Portageville High School baseball coach Tyler Trover pose with their respective college jerseys (Massey played both basketball and baseball) from Williams Baptist University recently at the Main Street Restaurant in downtown Bernie.
Tom Davis ~ Tdavis@semoball.com
This is the third in a series of stories on the lifelong friendship of two of the more successful baseball coaches in Southeast Missouri.
BERNIE – Best friends since their first days as kindergarten students at Bernie Elementary School, one would believe that the fact that Tyler Trover and Marcus Massey ended up as roommates at Williams Baptist University in Walnut Ridge, Ark. had to have been part of some master plan.
“No,” Massey said of his choosing to play basketball at the same school in which Trover signed to play baseball. “We had no idea.”
Well, there goes that fantastic storyline.
But the fact IS, the two Mule student-athletes DID end up being roommates and competing for the Eagles, though each had different pathways laid by older mentors.
In the case of Trover, his father, David, attended Williams Baptist, so he naturally showed his son the opportunity, and Trover’s ability as a baseball standout at Bernie took care of the rest.
For Massey, he relied upon a former Mule star athlete himself, Jim Dawson, who once played at basketball Missouri and later, baseball at Arkansas State. (On a related and incredibly interesting sidenote) Dawson ultimately coached high school basketball in Florida, where he happened to groom a kid named Tracy McGrady, who would become an NBA Draft Lottery selection straight out of high school.
“I had no idea where Williams Baptist was,” Massey said. “I had never heard of it. (Coach Dawson) took me down there.”
Massey was told by legendary Three Rivers basketball coach Gene Bess that he could come to Poplar Bluff, but he would spend one season as a redshirt, while Williams Baptist was telling him that he wouldn’t pay a dime if he signed to play there.
As it turned out, not only was Williams Baptist going to invest money in Massey, but the Eagle coaches were also planning on utilizing him – a lot.
Massey averaged over 25 minutes per game as a freshman and scored 11 points in his second college game ever against Blue Mountain College. He ultimately averaged over nine points per game that season.
“I was fortunate,” Massey said, “that when I went there, I got to play.”
His adjustment to the next level was smoother on the court than it was in the classroom, though.
Trover was nearly in tears (laughing), as he recalled the story of Massey getting some serious assistance from his best friend on an English assignment, which was a great idea, right up until the professor called the two out for turning in identical pieces of work.
“No one ever said we couldn’t work together on it,” Trover said (still) defensively.
Massey initially wanted to study “something in agriculture,” which was his best guess for a field of study, but in reality, he hadn’t given that end of college much thought.
“Immature mindset out of high school,” Massey explained, “all I wanted to do was play ball. That was all that was on my mind. I was going to play until I was 38. You just don’t think that far ahead.”
Massey ended up starting 85 games in his four seasons and scored over 1,000 points, which places him 14th on the all-time Williams Baptist scoring list.
For Trover, he’ll speak of having a “huge” adjustment to college baseball, but his memory is more humbling than the reality.
“The biggest thing was sticking it out at college,” Trover said, “because it is tough. Sometimes you want to walk away from it.”
Trover was the only freshman at Williams Baptist that spring to make the varsity squad as a position player.
He started 12 of the 16 games that he played in that season after the Eagles’ All-American Midwest Conference first baseman got injured. Trover made the position switch to first base and he hit .281.
Now, it is true that Trover endured a sophomore slump offensively. He hit just .215 but still started 30 games.
“I wasn’t a great hitter in college,” Trover said. “I became a really good defender.”
Trover finished his career having played in 110 games and closed his final baseball season by hitting .286.
“The thing that I learned, from a coaching standpoint,” Trover explained, “was to appreciate the role player. I don’t think that if I didn’t have that college experience, of having to struggle, and deal with failure, I don’t think that I would have been as effective as a coach.”
Massey’s basketball career closed in a Saturday loss against Park University (he hit 4 of 8 shots and finished with 10 points). He knew that academically he was going to have to extend his career a fifth season to graduate, so he spoke with the Eagles’ baseball coach about trying out as a pitcher.
“At the tryout,” Massey explained, “he was like ‘Alright, let’s go.’”
The stunning part of Massey’s athletic story is that three days after playing hoops in a conference tournament game, he took to the mound and pitched for the first time since he was a senior at Bernie – with a borrowed glove - and threw five innings against Three Rivers.
“I hadn’t pitched in four years,” Massey said.
Massey played two seasons of baseball and ranks second in Eagles’ history in saves.
Both student-athletes achieved success on AND off of the field, as Trover met his wife, Taylor, at a Wal-Mart in Pocahontas, Ark. (which is a separate story), and the couple are proud parents of Aubree (13) and Tripp (6), while Massey’s wife, Jenny, is a Bernie High grad that followed him to Williams Baptist to play volleyball, and the Massey’s have one son, Mason (3).
Neither have any thoughts of ever venturing out of Stoddard County again, despite having had a positive experience when they gave it a shot earlier in life.
“For me,” Trover said, “there may have been a time where I thought about coaching in Arkansas. But once I moved home, I never really considered moving away.”
Massey and his wife lived in Jonesboro, Ark. when she was doing graduate work at Arkansas State University, but they are back home in Bernie now.
“Most of my family is here,” Massey said. “The majority live right here in town or around here.”
Coming Friday: Marcus Massey and Tyler Trover know one thing in life, and that is to work.
