Baseball Senior Continues BVU Family Tradition
Following in his family's footsteps, Parker Truesdell came to BVU to play baseball. Though a less than ideal senior season was cut short by COVID-19, he remains positive.
Parker Truesdell interrupts a workout to take a phone call on a blustery day in late March. The workout can wait, like a lot of things these days. Truesdell, a senior infielder for the Buena Vista University baseball team, is back home in Clear Lake waiting for word on a coronavirus breakthrough.
“I don’t really know what to do with my time right now,” he says.
The senior exercise science major has just returned from a baseball spring break trip to Tucson in which the Beavers played zero games. The season was cancelled during BVU’s visit to Arizona, all of it succumbing to a virus.
It’s painful for Truesdell, who followed his older brother, his father, and his grandfather in playing baseball at BVU. As it is, he’ll complete his semester online and then finish up his degree with a pair of courses this summer, doing so while he serves as a groundskeeper and an umpire in the youth leagues serving his hometown.
“My suitemates and teammates are in a group chat. We check in on each other all the time. We’re already thinking about the next time we can get together on campus.”
Parker Truesdell
“I’d love to earn my personal trainer’s certification within the next couple of years,” says Truesdell, who is coming off a January internship at Anytime Fitness in Storm Lake.
“I learned so much in my major the last two years,” he says. “I’m very excited to see what I can do in this field.”
Parker Truesdell says he knew eight years ago that BVU would be the place for him. He trailed along as his older brother, Tanner Truesdell, visited BVU for the first time. Tanner played baseball for Coach Steve Eddie as well.
“My mom is from Storm Lake originally, and she went to BVU,” Parker says. “My dad played baseball at BVU, so did my grandpa. None of them put any pressure on me to go to BVU, I just knew it immediately.”
In suiting up for the Beavers, Truesdell realized a childhood dream to play collegiate baseball. He also learned a valuable life lesson when, as a junior, he went from being a starter to a substitute. Eddie lauded him for taking the high road in being the best teammate possible, even under circumstances one might deem less than ideal.
“I wanted to be positive for my team,” he says. “I tried to be a motivator, because that’s the kind of thing I’ll be doing at my job as a certified personal trainer. You want to be clear with people, but you also want to motivate them and be as supportive as you can.”
His junior season ended with a championship in the American Rivers Conference Tournament, a highlight Truesdell says he’ll cherish along with the friends he made and still communicates with daily, even if from a distance.
“My suitemates and teammates are in a group chat,” he says. “We check in on each other all the time. We’re already thinking about the next time we can get together on campus.”
In the end, there’s no place he’d rather be.
“I knew BVU is exactly the place where I would be,” he says. “I fell in love with it.”