Loyola New Orleans

Wait for infielddad to pipe in about Coach Beeman. Beeman was on the staff at Trinity in San Antonio during the time infielddad had a son playing there. Beeman was coaching Georgetown when he contacted my son. He was a straight up guy.

Newcomer,
Well, I am thrilled to have you post that development and ask some questions about Coach "Doc" Beeman.
I first met Doc in 2000 and will never forget that when I walked into the baseball office that Fall, he was busy filling out professional prospect questionaires for a number of players at Trinity while he waited for GM's from several wood bat leagues to call back to talk about placements for the following summer. For the next two years, before he moved to take the assistant's job at Georgetown, I came to know Doc as a very hard working, organized coach who did/does all the little things that add to the college baseball experience. He is tireless but patient, hardworking while also being a devoted husband and father. Both on and off the field, you can't entrust to your son to anyone better than Coach Beeman.
I know Coach Beeman was at the Stanford Camp and that is likely where your son generated his interest.
I can assure that you won't find a more decent and honest young coach than Doc. He has great integrity, loves baseball and loves being a baseball coach. He is also a student of the game and does a first rate job with player development. He wants to win, will get his team to become a winner and he will do it the right way.
If there is any question about what Doc stands for as a baseball coach, I hope it can be illustrated with some information I took the liberty to cut/paste off the Loyola website:

"The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) and Buffalo Funds will present Buffalo Funds Five Star Awards for each of the NAIA’s 23 championship sports. The Loyola University New Orleans baseball team was recently awarded the Buffalo Funds Five Star Award for their dedication and implementation of the five core character values on and off the field.



The Loyola Wolfpack, one of 212 NAIA baseball programs, is under the direction of Head Coach Doc Beeman who just completed his second year at Loyola University. The 2006 campaign was not a typical year for the coaching staff, administration or players. With hurricane Katrina canceling Loyola’s fall semester, the Wolfpack scattered across the country and scrambled to take classes at other colleges and universities. With all but two of the original 37 players from the fall roster returning to Loyola for the spring semester, the Loyola baseball team took to Segnette Field in their first workout on January 10th. 17 days later they would open the season against Faulkner University (Ala.) at Segnette Field in the first college baseball game in the city of New Orleans post-Katrina and the first game played in the state of Louisiana this year."

Core values is what Coach Beeman is all about. I am not surprised he and his team would get recognized for such an award.
Good luck and I hope this information about Doc and his program helps.

I heard this coach speak at a showcase, and he had one of the best lines I heard about recruiting. He said, "Feel free to ask me about your son. I will speak with any of you, but don't get angry if you don't like what you hear."

There are many levels to that statement. I believe that many coaches avoid parents and players to avoid the high emotions that go along with getting recruited.

Liked the guy. He was a high energy, honest guy.

I can reiterate all that infielddad said about Doc, as he recruited our son, Zak, to LUNO in 2005. Most likely Doc saw ours first in 2004 at PG National Academic when he was with Georgetown, then at Stanford that July. While Katrina changed our lives, in particular sending our son out of baseball, I have nothing but the highest regard for Doc. He was persistent, but very low-key in the process, and I am truly sorry Zak did not play for him. They have a great facility in Segnette Field, but it is off-campus across the Mississippi. Baseball practice facilities on campus are very limited, too, althought they have a nice weight room and athletics complex.

I will be brutally honest in the following, not trying to hurt Doc or LUNO, because I have great respect for him and the folks who run the University. But I feel you may benefit from the truth. First, I will warn you that NOLA is a mere shadow of her previous vibrant, boisterous, sometimes-outrageous self that I loved very much. While the city was very dangerous pre-Katrina, crime has become nearly as big a problem again, one I believe may be deemphasized or covered up to a degree by the powers that be to help re-attract tourism. NOLA Mayor Nagin has his heart in the right place but I believe was in over his head with Katrina and still is post-Katrina.

The healthcare system is in shambles, an issue that should concern every parent whose son or daughter is considering a school in NOLA. Both Tulane and LSU medical schools hospitals were lost, as was Charity Hospital. Ochnser and Touro hospitals/clinics are operating, as are a few others outside NOLA proper, but are not sufficient.

Transportation from the Garden District to the Quarter and elsewhere was limited by the absence of the St. Charles Avenue streetcar. Although the city was running buses to substitute, they were infrequent and not timely. If the streecars are back on line, that's fantastic, they are a great way to get around.

When we left the LUNO campus in April, it was a bit of a mess, understaffed, and they had actually eliminated our son's major, consolidated some programs and cut back overall. If that has changed since, I am not aware, but it was among several factors that prompted our son to withdraw and go elsewhere. The campus is tiny, smaller than the HS our son graduated from, and is heavily skewed towards music and "artsy" kids. Now, that's good if your son is into that, and appropriate for NOLA, but I would not consider it well-rounded even though they have a very diverse national and international student body. That being said, I liked the faculty we met or came into contact with, and the school itself strives to uphold Jesuit educational standards and mores. To my knowledge, the faculty and staff have the best interests of the students foremost.

I wish you the best, but please make your decision an informed one by visiting NOLA and LUNO with Doc. See for yourself, don't take my word, as things change. I'm just trying to provide a backgrounder. In any case, you would not go wrong trusting your son with Doc Beeman, who did not deserve what happened with Katrina.

Use the following link to read up on NOLA.

NOLA Times-Picayune

Very good post TARatko! Folks in NO have a tough time right now and for some time to come. There a some rough spots in the world to try to live, work and play. NO is on the list.

Attending any college out of our area would be a huge family, as well as personal, adjustment for our son. I am cognizant (who isn't) about the effects of Katrina on New Orleans and environs. It will surely raise questions for us in talking with the coach (if it ever gets to that point). As altruistic is this may sound, rebuilding efforts in New Orleans cannot begin nor be sustained with SOMEBODY going there and showing support. If not for the school (which has had a solid reputation in the past) but for the community. Whether or not these efforts will come from my son playing baseball at Loyola or not..it's going to be somebody's son. And this coach sounds like the type of person who will work hard to make good things happen no matter what.

Years ago, I posted here as 60-90 Mom, but my activity lapsed when the youngest of my three sons took a route that didn't include high school baseball (he's continued to play rec ball). I came here today just to see what was going on and ran across this thread, so I re-registered.

Newcomer, you're asking all the right questions and with an excellent, open-minded attitude. You've gotten good advice from both TARatko and infielddad, who both obviously know much more about the baseball program than I do, but I remember clearly what it felt like to send my Middle Son (not an athlete) back to New Orleans to resume his sophomore year at Loyola University New Orleans (Loyno) last winter. I knew that power was on and off, internet was unreliable, and the streetcar that got him to school from his apartment in an Uptown house just off St. Charles (on the parade route) wasn't running. I knew that there were 200 emergency room beds and no trauma center. Forget dependable 911. I begged him to spend one more semester at Georgia State and return in the fall of '06. He went to collect some belongings in November of '05 and went back to live on December 31st of '05. It's impossible to convey how disruptive it all was and I don't pretend to be able to understand how traumatic is was for the freshmen who had to evacuate 48 hours before classes were to begin.

I also agree with TARatko's assessment of the Loyno campus. It's small and the dividing line between it and the neighborhood is minimal (but the neighborhood is really, really cool). There is an elementary school virtually on the campus, a campus that is also smaller than my son's high school, in acreage, but it is surrounded by Tulane, so, while the students get the kind of personalized academic experience of a very small university, they also get the advantage of living in a considerably larger academic community. While Loyno's administration made some very controversial cuts last spring, including their highly regarded Communications Studies program, this is all still in flux and Loyno students can take classes at any of the universities in the Consortium formed by Loyola, Tulane, Xavier and Dillard. Our experience is that they are very generous with financial aid.

If I was a young person right now, I can't imagine any place I'd rather go. What is happening there is historic and so multi-dimensional that it's impossible to convey in one message board post.

I was in New Orleans in July and again in August (the weekend prior to the anniversary of the flood). A lot has improved since last winter and spring. The campus looks perfect. There are excellent pics on the slide show at www.loyno.edu. Trash collection has gotten more dependable, and the bus runs up and down St. Charles making it easier to get downtown and to the Quarter (not to mention how much easier it is to drive without having to factor in the streetcar). The area behind the campuses on Claiborne has improved considerably (it was pretty bad), and the neutral ground on St. Charles is all cleaned up. Middle Son told me today that it looks like they're preparing to start the St. Charles streetcar line up again (I can try to find out for sure), but he's had no problems riding the bus. There are still boarded up big box stores (they can afford to wait it out) along St. Charles but the Rite Aid closest to the Us is open and the businesses around the Us and at Riverbend are opening and bustling. Magazine Street and Tchopitoulous look like nothing ever happend. There are better emergency services every day. With the National Guard patrolling the most uninhabited areas of the city, which are vaster than anyone can imagine, the NOPD is doing a better job of managing what is an admittedly real crime problem. I read the Times-Picayune daily and follow and mapquest the violent incidents. There doesn't seem to me to be a serious stranger on stranger crime wave in New Orleans right now. While it isn't a good idea to wander about away from the campuses alone at night, the shootings that have gotten so much national attention were not random and did not occur in the areas directly around the Us. Of course, my view of this could be skewed by the fact that I live and have raised my children in Atlanta, which isn't exactly crime free.

What there is in New Orleans, like I've never seen before, is a unified sense of purpose, a certainty that just being there is doing something important and historic. I think they might be right. My youngest is a senior in high school. He's applying to his oldest brother's alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, with its amazing almost 800 acre campus, five miles from the beach and five miles from that totally awesome downtown on the banks of the Cape Fear River, but he's also applying to Loyola and to the University of New Orleans.

I recommend that you visit, perhaps even volunteer to gut a house while you're there. The need is desperate. I don't think it's for everyone, but for some there's nothing else that comes close.

Please feel free to email me at soph_mom@yahoo.com or send me a PM. I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

DotCalm