GCU baseball field was training ground for group of Phoenix firefighters

PHOENIX – More than a dozen former Grand Canyon University baseball players remain on the same team as members of the Phoenix Fire Department.

“We all put a GCU sticker on our helmets,” Captain Austin Moreland said Tuesday. “It’s kind of our way of staying connected to each other and to the school, remembering our roots as baseball players there.”

Moreland played catcher at Grand Canyon University from 2000 to 2004.

“I know of at least 13 guys that work for Phoenix Fire that played baseball at GCU,” he said.

“But we have a lot of guys who we played baseball with working at surrounding departments like Peoria and Glendale.”

Moreland believes the lessons learned as college athletes have prepared him and his teammates in more ways than one for their firefighting careers.

“We were like blue-collar athletes,” he said. “We didn’t have fancy facilities. We were very hard working. We built close bonds.

“We had good morale and we had to be disciplined, and a lot of those things bleed over to the fire service.”

Moreland said he sees his former teammates fairly often and has close bonds with them even though they work different shifts.

“We text back and forth and continue our friendships,” he said. “Majority of us are married and have kids, so we’re all kind of on the same page in life.”

Moreland said baseball taught him how to expect the unexpected, which happens often in his job.

“What I really learned from baseball is that you never know what’s going to happen in a game, and that transfers over to the fire service,” he said.

“You know you are working for 24 hours, but you really don’t know what going to happen during that shift.”

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