West Virginia’s Benjamin Lumsden takes a swing at the newly renamed Kendrick Family Ballpark at the Mon County Baseball Complex. (Photo Provided)

MORGANTOWN — The best part of Ken Kendrick’s gift to West Virginia University’s baseball program didn’t get the headlines on Thursday when it was announced, but it figures to make the headlines in the future as it helps the team take the next step toward realizing its dream of becoming one of the NCAA’s baseball’s elites.

The headlines centered upon changing the name of Mon County Ballpark to the Kendrick Family Ballpark at the Mon County Baseball Complex and, in the long run, the complex promises to be the fuel to provide liftoff to transport the program to the next level.

Added to the ballpark will be an 8,200-square-foot structure by the clubhouse that will include two regulation-sized pitching lanes, a soft toss area and two full-size batting lanes.

It will be more than just practice areas to be used when the weather turns bad, though.

The pitching and batting areas will be outfitted with state-of-the-art Trackman technology to help coaches and players analyze and improve performance.

Coach Randy Mazey likens it to the Wake Forest complex that includes a pitching laboratory which has lifted the Demon Deacons into national prominence.

“It means the world,” Mazey said after beating BYU in the Mountaineers’ Big 12 opener on Thursday of the addition that is supposed to be completed next February. “When we built this facility — the stadium — the program obviously made a big jump. Now, with this new facility, we will be one of probably six or seven programs in the country that have the technology and the resources that are going to go into the new facility.

“That will make a huge difference in the program. If you know who the other six programs were that had what we’re getting ready to have, they are the programs that you see playing in June (in the College World Series) all the time. Everybody talks about Wake Forest’s pitching lab,” Mazey continued. “(Coach) Tom Walters is a great friend of mine. We grew up together and when we played in the regional there in 2017, he showed me around the lab and what they do and now we are going to have what they have.”

Mazey won’t be the recipient of the benefits from it, as he has announced his retirement following this season, but he takes pride in its existence and believes it will be the perfect step forward to help his successor Steve Sabins.

“Fast forward from 2017 to now and look where Wake Forest’s program is at because of it,” Mazey said. “Fast forward seven years from now and people will be talking about West Virginia baseball like people are talking about Wake Forest baseball today.”

“Today” Wake Forest is coming off its first ACC championship in 60 years and a regional championship and a trip to the 2023 College World Series in Omaha.

WVU is ready for that kind of jump and this could be the difference maker.

“It seems like we’re one or two things away from being one of those programs on the national level who you think about when you think about the best,” said Aiden Major, Thursday’s winning pitcher. You are thinking about Wake Forest, LSU and some SEC schools. I think we are right on the cusp of being in that conversation.”

The gift from the Kendrick family has been in the works for a long time, according to Mazey.

A WVU alum and one of the schools most active donors, Kendrick runs the Arizona Diamondbacks and has been keenly involved in the Mountaineer baseball program.

“This has been in the works for a long time,” Mazey admitted. “I visited with Ken Kendrick maybe the first month when I took the job. Oliver Luck (then athletic director and one of the founders with Kendrick of the Country Roads Trust) and I went out there and met with him. At that point I just wanted to get to know Ken and see what his vision for the West Virginia baseball program was and he wanted to know what mine was.

“We established that relationship and stayed in touch,” Mazey continued. “We were out there and played a couple of times. I’m a relationship guy and I appreciate the generosity of Ken and Rick (Wagener, whose name is on the field at the ballpark) and those guys financially, but appreciate their friendship and loyalty a lot more. That will be here after the facility.

“Ken’s vision for Mountaineer baseball matches mine, matches Rick Wagener’s and Oliver Luck’s and Keli Zinn’s (former associate AD). Without people like that you can’t function. It takes the Kendricks and Wageners of the world to bring this to fruition.