INDEPENDENT SPIRIT

Following the dissolution of the Pac-12, Oregon State embraces the uncertainty-and challenge of playing with no conference affiliation and remaining a national power

- JACOB RUDNER

When Mitch Canham took over Oregon State's baseball program in the summer of 2019, he knew the road ahead wouldn't be easy.

The Beavers were one of the nation's premier programs, and falling even a little short of the resulting expectations, he said, "was never an option."

But Canham didn't expect it to be quite this complicated, either.

The former Beaver star-turned-head coach has weathered a storm of adversity since taking the reins, opening his tenure with the chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic and navigating the lingering effects of that disruption.

Five years later, Canham believes he has encountered his greatest obstacle yet.

This latest hurdle-the loss of the school's longstanding conference home-stands as the most significant test of his young coaching career, one that demands both resilience and reinvention as he steers the Beavers into an uncertain future.

With the Pacific-12 Conference crumbling under the weight of conference realignment, and the Beavers left holding the pieces of a once-proud league, Canham was faced with a daunting question:

What now?

"There was a lot of uncertainty," Canham said. "We just immediately started weighing all of our options and thinking about what the absolute best move for Oregon State would be."

With their conference affiliation in flux, the Beavers' options seemed both wide open and perilously narrow.

One route was to try to squeeze into an already-crowded conference, a solution that would have offered stability, even if it were only a temporary fix.

Several leagues, notably the Big 12 and Atlantic Coast conferences, were adding schools in the wake of the Pac-12's unraveling, and Oregon State was certainly an attractive option for any conference looking to solidify its athletic profile, especially on the diamond.