An early July trip to Colorado produced an unexpected gift for a walk-on junior college pitcher and the Cougars new pitching coach.

Damon Jones pitched for the Sterling Xpress, a summer league baseball team in Sterling, Colorado, and already decided he would return to the College of Southern Idaho. He already told Boomer Walker, the Eagles’ head coach, of his decision to pitch for CSI after missing his freshman season due to an elbow injury.

As his summer league season came to a close, WSU pitching coach Dan Spencer made the trip to watch outfielder Dugan Shirer, who already committed to WSU. In a small crowd at the Xpress’ home field, Spencer caught the eye of Nancy Jones, Dugan’s mother, who made the drive from Twin Falls, Idaho, to watch her son pitch.

“I didn’t really have a chance to watch him play until that fateful night when we drove nine hours and got to the game,” Nancy said in a phone interview.

Nancy’s mother and father-in-law came with her to Colorado to watch Damon pitch. The father-in-law started talking to Spencer once Damon took the mound and after a handful of pitches, Nancy was talking to the Cougar pitching coach about a scholarship offer.

“I don’t know that I can put that into words. It was nothing short of amazing,” Nancy said. “The next thing you know he hands me his card and says, ‘What would you say if I offered your son a scholarship to come pitch at Washington State?’ I think my jaw was on the ground – I tried to act like it was a cool thing but my heart was racing. It was one of those things where you say ‘someone pinch me because this isn’t real.’”

At 7:30 a.m. the next morning Damon and his mother received a call from Spencer and Head Coach Marty Lees. The four worked out how much his scholarship would cover and at the end of the phone call, the Cougars had a new weekend starting pitcher for the 2016 season.

“It all really happened in two days,” Damon said. “That night I pitched I started our first playoff game there. I got a text from him (Spencer) that night saying he would call me in the morning. That day was pretty much back and forth between Lees, Spencer and my coaches at CSI.”

With the thought of already informing his coaches at College of Southern Idaho that he would return, and having a chance to accept a scholarship to pitch at a Pac-12 school, it was a day of mixed emotions for the 6-foot-5 left-hander.

“It was all over the place,” Damon said with a smile. “I was on the phone constantly and that’s pretty much all I did that day was talk on the phone. I was at my host family’s house with my mom. She was there to talk it out with me since it was a new experience.”

Change Brings Growth

As a 21-year-old redshirt sophomore, Damon is in a unique situation of being young and old without having a lot of experience at the college level. But at 6-foot-5, 220-pounds, Spencer knew from the first pitch he clocked in July that he was getting into something special.

“I didn’t know who he was until I saw him pitch,” Spencer said. “He’s big – 6-foot-5 left-hander and he was going 88-89 miles per hour with a slider and change. He had three pitches for strikes, good body and threw a lot of strikes. A chance to get a big left-handed guy that you think is going to start for you that late in the summer is a pretty good deal.”

That good deal for Spencer almost didn’t come to fruition, with Damon held up on keeping his word to the CSI coaches. But his mother spoke to him about the opportunity in front of him and his dream of being a top pitcher in college and eventually, potentially, at the professional level.

“Damon is a loyal kid and he’s got such a good heart,” his mother said. “He was worried about telling the coach that he committed to come back to CSI that he wasn’t going to attend and that he was going to take this shot at Washington State.”

The opportunity presented at WSU proved to be too big to turn down. Now, instead of listening to Shinedown in the locker room before heading out to pitch for CSI, Damon will bring his rock play list he’s had since high school to Pullman.