Keep' Goin: Longhorns' repeating mantra of persistence on quest for Omaha success

OMAHA, Neb. — When Texas boarded busses outside of UFCU Disch-Falk Field on Wednesday ahead of its departure for the College World Series, every Longhorn player and coach wore a shirt that had two simple words on the front: “Keep Goin’.”

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Head coach David Pierce didn’t want to take credit for the slogan because he wasn’t exactly sure of its origin. In Omaha, Neb. on Wednesday, Texas shortstop Trey Faltine was asked about the genesis of the phrase as a team tagline. Pierce cracked a smile at the question: “I want to hear, I don’t know the real answer.”

Faltine told the tale. During a fall intersquad scrimmage, Faltine and first baseman Ivan Melendez were singing along to some of the songs played over the speakers at the Disch. DJ Khaled’s “EVERY CHANCE I GET” came on, and at a certain point the music mogul belts out “Keep Goin’.”

Faltine and Melendez followed suit.

“I kind of jokingly said it, then little by little I just kept saying it,” Faltine said Thursday. “Eventually, the whole team caught on, and now it’s on our T-shirt.”

What started as something funny became the team’s rallying cry. Whenever a Texas batter is fouling pitches off during a lengthy at bat, most of the dugout can be heard yelling those two words.

It’s said after wins. It’s on T-shirts for sale at the University Co-Op. It’s part of Texas’ social media campaigns. Now in the College World Series, Texas wants to live up to that mantra and keep goin’, all the way to national title No. 7.

The phrase is a fitting one as Texas had to persist through ups and downs during the 2022 season. The Longhorns started 11-0 then faced considerable turbulence in the middle portion of the year. After starting the season No. 1 in the major polls, a brutal stretch during March and April saw the Longhorns fall out of top 25.

“A little devastating for our team, but the thing that was most impressive with our team is that they didn’t get caught up into it and neither did our coaches,” Pierce said. “We never got frustrated to a point where players or coaches started pointing fingers or creating animosity between the two or each other. We just continued to play.”

Texas trekked toward the postseason and eventually attained the No. 9 national seed after making the Big 12 tournament finals. The Longhorns cruised through the Austin regional before traveling to Greenville, N.C. to face an East Carolina program hungry to win two-of-three and make its first trip to Omaha.

Things didn’t start well for the Longhorns, with the Pirates winning game one 13-7. The situation appeared to become dire during game two when ECU built a 7-2 lead at the seventh-inning stretch. A raucous crowd in Greenville became excited at the prospects of their first College World Series appearance.

But Texas, as they have all year, kept goin’. The Longhorns mounted a comeback, and, playing as the home team, silenced the crowd with a walk-off hit from Dylan Campbell. A five-run deficit in the late innings of an elimination game may have made most teams begin to think about the upcoming melancholy trip home. Texas doesn’t play like most teams. They keep goin’.

“I never sensed any kind of panic or even frustration down five in the seventh in game two,” Pierce said.

Added Faltine: “Obviously, it’s in the rap song, but for baseball we’re fighting until the end. We’re never going to stop until we’re out, until the last strike is thrown, until the last out. I think that resembles everything we’ve done this year, just to keep goin’ and keep fighting until the end.”

This Texas team doesn’t want the end to be the final out of a second loss in Omaha, whenever that might be. The Longhorns want the end to be another national championship, something that, despite peaks and valleys throughout the year, they are totally fixated on bringing back to Austin.

“We just continued to play,” Pierce said. “We just continued to think that we’re going to get better every day, and we did.”

In other words, they kept goin’, all the way to Omaha for the 38th time in program history.