As designated hitter Bryn Renner approached the batter’s box in his first collegiate at-bat, the crowd at Boshamer Stadium rose to their feet.
Most cheered for North Carolina to finally get on the board in the seventh inning of the Saturday afternoon game with the freshman’s bat. UNC quarterback T.J. Yates and offensive coordinator John Shoop rose to encourage their teammate.
Renner has been moonlighting this spring, splitting his time between baseball and football, where he redshirted last season at quarterback and is vying to start next season. Recruited to play football by Butch Davis, Renner has essentially been on loan to Mike Fox’s baseball team this season.
He finds himself jumping from Boshamer to Kenan Stadium daily, trying to balance the act of playing two varsity sports in college. And at the end of each day, he’s exhausted.
“It’s pretty tough,” Renner said. “It’s a lot of walking back and forth, but luckily it’s so close. It definitely gets tiring.”
Three-sport star
Bill Renner had his son playing football and baseball by the age of five. A former punter with the Green Bay Packers, Bill even coached his son at Virginia’s West Springfield High, where Bryn captained his team to back-to-back district championships as the No. 6 quarterback in the nation.
Renner’s first love was football — and it’s tough to say if the cause was nature or nurture. Not only did his dad coach and play football, but his grandfather coached for nearly three decades. Growing up, Renner was even on his dad’s staff.
“I was a ball boy, so I was always around it,” Renner said. “He basically told me to love it, so I loved it.”
At a baseball tournament in Virginia two years ago, Bill approached Fox, and they discussed the possibility of the talented high schooler playing both sports at UNC.
Renner was also coming off the basketball season, where he led the state in scoring his junior year. A Elite 11 quarterback, he was scouted by a College World Series coach while scorching the nets on the hardwood. Would he be interested in suiting up in the Smith Center?
“Not at all. That’s a little too much,” he said.
Ball and stick sense
Alongside Yates, Renner spent hours practicing on the field and watching film during the football season. He donned his No. 2 jersey every game but didn’t have a single grass stain to show for it. For the first time in his life, Renner was on the bench.
But he learned constantly while on the sidelines for North Carolina’s 13 games and believes that his redshirt season only made him better.
“It was a humbling experience, and I learned a lot from T.J.,” Renner said. “It’s good going behind the scenes and just watching.”
After UNC’s 19-17 loss to Pittsburgh in the Meineke Car Care Bowl, Renner could turn his attention to the baseball team, which had worked around his schedule all season. This semester, he began practicing with Coach Fox’s club but did not give up football completely, despite being out of season.
Earlier in the season, Renner would begin his day at 6 a.m. with a run and weight lifting. After classes were done at 11, he would hit with the baseball team and work on fundamentals before tossing the pigskin at unofficial football practices.
He’s appeared in only eight games this season, but has two hits and three RBIs in nine at-bats. Renner’s presence with the team was cut short recently with the start of spring football practice.
“I like guys who have ball and stick sense,” said Shoop, who played both baseball and football during his collegiate years. “We love watching him play, and we’re rooting for him, but once spring football hits, we’re all football here.”
Double duty
This isn’t the first time one of Davis’ players has shared duties with another squad on campus. Two years ago, cornerback Kendric Burney played under Coach Fox as a right fielder and relief pitcher, appearing in 11 games for the Tar Heels.
Although Davis and his staff have been supportive of his players taking opportunities with other clubs, he did not always see it as a positive.
“It certainly didn’t help Kendric, but they play totally different positions,” Davis said. “Kendric needed to work on speed; he needed to work on size and strength because of tackling. I mean, we’re not going to ask Bryn to do a whole lot of tackling, I don’t think.”
Wide receiver Greg Little is another multi-sport athlete, having donned argyle for Roy Williams’ squad two seasons ago. He believes that Renner bringing over the baseball team’s winning mentality will do nothing but help the football team.
“It gives you that diversity of being with two programs and being able to incorporate some things that they do, because they’re a winning program also,” Little said.
Fox admitted that Renner was behind his baseball teammates because he didn’t participate in the fall. But his slower development as a baseball player doesn’t mean he offers little to the team, and Fox said Renner is a “presence in the dugout.”
With spring football practice kicking off earlier this week, Renner is finally getting a chance at the starting job against Yates and Braden Hanson. But he said he expects nothing but tough competition. And Davis said Renner still has a lot to learn and prove on the gridiron.
“Are there times when I wish he wasn’t over there, wish he was watching a little bit more film? Of course there are,” Shoop said. “He knows from the get-go there are going to be days where I’m frustrated that he’s playing baseball, and I wish he were over here more with me. But overall, there’s no substitute for competition.”
April 10
It all coalesces on a Saturday. UNC’s Spring Game is slated for 3 p.m. on April 10 at Kenan. That night at 6, the Tar Heels take to the diamond against N.C. State at Boshamer.
The NCAA allows athletes to play both matches, like Clemson quarterback Kyle Parker last season, and that’s what Renner plans to do.
“I’ve been looking forward to that day,” Renner said. “People have done it in the past. It should be a lot of fun.”
For Renner, choosing to play another sport while vying for the starting quarterback job was risky. But he’s getting support from both sets of teammates and coaches.
Even though his first plate appearance ended up being a ground ball to the second baseman, Renner advanced the runners during his nine-pitch at-bat. And both in the dugout and in the crowd, he was congratulated by his teammates and coaches.
“I just thought to myself, that serves him well,” Shoop said. “There’s a guy who’s competing, and if you can compete in a big stadium, it’s going to serve you well as a quarterback.”
Contact the Sports Editorat sports@unc.edu.
