Cooney was the Owls’ baseball coach for 21 years. It gives him the required perspective to put the program’s dire situation in context. After a school-record 748 wins at FAU, he resigned in 2008 after believing the administration wasn’t doing enough for the baseball program to remain competitive.

“Having the feeling that you were asking a lot out of your players,” Cooney said about the hardest part of being FAU’s coach. “Asking for them to believe in what you were doing and sacrificing a lot of creature comforts just to have a really good program. Never really able to kindle or spark the administration or the fanbase.”

The very same stadium he personally helped build in 1991 has seen few renovations done in the past couple decades. From sweeping the mound, to repainting old windscreens, to lawn upkeep, the upgrades have literally been a result of Cooney’s sweat.

There are still no bathrooms for players or coaches to use — compared to 21 of them in FAU’s football stadium — which is a leaky situation for all involved. With no restrooms, Cooney was forced to urinate underneath the grandstand.

“I’d go there, close the gate, get right up against the wall, and hope no one walking down the stairs would look down and inadvertently see the coach of the team going to the bathroom,” Cooney said.

Cooney even risked his life for the underappreciated program one season.

“I know my hands have touched every single part of that stadium,” Cooney said. “I remember one opening day, I was standing where the press box is and I’m having a couple of my players holding onto my leg as I put the flag, I’m thinking, ‘Jeez, I could get killed doing this.’”

The in-game experience for fans was comparable to bush league standards.

“The concession is less than a high school situation, having a trailer pulled in and selling out of a trailer,” Cooney said. “Are you kidding me? This is division one baseball.”

In the meantime, no other FAU sport has to deal with the same treatment while preparing for games, including dragging equipment out onto the field before practice.

“By comparison, when basketball practice ends, you take the ball and put it away,” Cooney said. “You ever see basketball players sweep the floor? I don’t think so.”

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In fact, it’s gotten worse.

At the beginning of last season, the team had just completed a three-game road sweep of SEC opponent Alabama. Outfielder Alex Hudak, now with the Kansas City Royals, led the way, blasting four home runs in the set. The players were on a high, basking in the glow of their accomplishments.

Four months later, they’d be dog-piling Corey Keller for his walk-off hit against FIU to win the Sun Belt Conference.

But, at that moment?

Roadside self-service due to the team bus, on its way to the airport in Atlanta, overheating. Filling jugs of water into the radiator along with the bus driver, players, and coaching staff. Missing the team plane back to Florida.

It was a first time occurrence for multiple members of the squad.

Hudak played over 90 games in his two seasons at FAU, and he never recalled dealing with such an inconvenience in his entire baseball career.

“No, and I probably never will,” Hudak said. “I wish I would, because even though it was an amazing inconvenience, we did something that no one ever does.”

Same goes for his former teammate, close friend, and current Washington National Mike Albaladejo, whom he’d met years ago in Orlando as high school competitors.

“Absolutely not have I experienced something like that,” added Albaladejo. “That was a funny bus ride because we just had a great three-game sweep against Alabama. We were expecting to have a nice cruise back to FAU. All the sudden we turn off on the side of the road and we’re like, ‘What is going on?’”

The team got back safely — at 8:45 a.m. the following day — but they returned home to the same problems.

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Before a game, you can often catch various members of the club out on the field, toiling with rakes and blow dryers. The double duty effort comes in place of a groundskeeping crew, which FAU has long lacked.

Outfielder Geoff Jimenez shared his most interesting moment from last season, and it involves manual labor.

“The fact of only playing one game against Arkansas State when we had three planned,” Jimenez said. “It rained the whole weekend. We had to get the field ready, and literally as a whole team we were out there blowdrying the grass, raking everything, just to get the game in so we can play them once.”

Jimenez was the only current player willing to speak out against the injustice. He keeps an optimistic viewpoint, but admitted the extra responsibilities are frustrating.

“It is a little,” Jimenez said. “Some of the big programs have people that do that. The fact that we were out there before a game, trying as hard as we can just to get a single game in … yeah, you think about it a little.”

Aside from the cosmetic work on the field, the players are also tasked with pulling out the ragged tarp, which is filled with holes and other wear-and-tear, during one of Florida’s frequent rain showers.

Through all the trials and tribulations, however, Owls baseball has sustained continual success.

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Despite this fact, FAU baseball has had just one losing season in the past 14 years. Meanwhile, the football program has two winning seasons since joining the D-1 ranks in 2005.

With a seat capacity of just over 2,000, Owls baseball has never hosted a conference tournament or NCAA regional, a disturbing situation for a proud champion that’s made it to seven NCAA regionals since 1999.

“In my four years, we had two great teams,” Albaladejo said. “We won two Sun Belt championships, and it was kind of sucky to know we were a great team on campus that never got to host a big game like that.”

Owls baseball has won the Sun Belt Conference title two of the last three years. After last season, five players (Hudak, Albaladejo, RJ Alvarez, Kyle Newton, and Ryan Garton) were picked up by MLB franchises.

Owls football, in contrast, have a combined 13 wins in the last 60 games.

Still, winning hasn’t altered an apathetic baseball fan base in Boca.

“Being the most successful program on campus and it doesn’t get a lot of exposure, compared to the football team and the basketball team,” Hudak said. “When you put a championship-caliber team on the field like the baseball team does every year, just to fight for recognition, it’s tough.”

The football team has a dismal 58-76 record since its inception in 2001, yet baseball was twisting in the wind. And the inequality between the funding of baseball vs. football didn’t sit well with the old ball coach.

“No one felt that we were [funded and marketed adequately],” Cooney said. “There’s limited dollars, and initially the bulk of money the AD had to spend went to basketball, men’s and women’s. In terms of everything, it was them. Whatever was leftover got doled out to the other programs. To me, that wasn’t fair. I equate [the distribution of money] to overfeeding some parts of your family, and others are starving. It was terrible.”

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With the season just underway, the focus is strictly on the field.

“Our job is to do well in school and win baseball games,” Owls head coach John McCormack said. “The rest of it will take care of itself.”

McCormack, who’s been a part of the program since 1991, is hopeful a new athletics director will translate to better facilities for his squad.

“We all have visions of renovations. The university — Pat Chun (athletic director) and Melissa Dawson (senior associate athletic director) — all understand what we need to get to. We have to be patient that there is a timeline on that,” McCormack said. “Do I envision a beautiful stadium there, like some of our competitors have? Yeah, I would love to have it and make things easier on the players and coaching staff. But there’s not and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Chun refused to put a definite timetable on the process, but understands the importance of enhancing the resources for baseball.

“We need to get them a viable, D-1 baseball stadium. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that,” Chun said. “That is in our thoughts right now. We recognize the fact that we need to find a way to improve their playing facility and cages and all that.”

From afar in his antique shop in Tennessee, Cooney still can’t help but daydream about better times ahead for his former program of “red-headed step children,” as he once called them. He thinks the already-talented team could gain even more promising recruits in the future if FAU gets serious about baseball.

“Someone comes in and says, ‘You know what, here’s $8 million, build yourself a stadium.’ The ideal scenario would be to be able to put in what’s in the best interest of the baseball program and not have the players suffer as a result,” Cooney said. “This is a nice little town where people should love baseball, and take in a game at FAU that’s in a stadium that has the proper amenities. If you can put your players in the right facility, you can get better players.”