It’s hard to imagine anyone as talented and baseball-gifted as former Marquette Academy all-stater Evan Snyder needing a fresh start in that very game, but he’ll soon be getting one in a new program with a familiar face at the helm.

Snyder, a 2016 graduate of MA who historically lost despite throwing a no-hitter in a Class 2A supersectional game and later starred for NJCAA powerhouse Parkland Junior College, has decided to leave the baseball program at NCAA Division I Western Kentucky.

Beginning this fall, he will be playing his senior season at the University of Illinois-Springfield, a Division II school in the state capital, under new head coach Ryan Copeland.

“I loved Western Kentucky, and I really enjoyed my time there, but I felt that in my situation, with everything that’s happened in the last year, this was the move I had to make,” said Snyder. “It’s worked out well, this opportunity at UIS, kind of like it was meant to be, and I’m really excited about being there and contributing to the really good program there.”

Snyder, who helped the Crusaders to the IHSA 1A Elite Eight twice and was a key pitcher for Parkland Community College when it placed second in the nation in 2018, signed with Western Kentucky University later that summer but, before his first season there, suffered an elbow injury. Last August he underwent surgery, which consisted, he said, of essentially a half Tommy John procedure in which the damaged partially-torn ligament was repaired with Kevlar, then sewed up and held in place with a screw.

“I never really thought that I would not be able to pitch again, but there were days when I sure felt like that, it’s such a grind,” Snyder said. “The toughest part was not the physical aspect, but the mental. There were days it felt like the world was crashing down around me, when I just didn’t want to throw, that it wasn’t worth it, but the trainer at Western, Dustin Wilson, he kept me going and on track.”

Projected to be out six to eight months, he decided to shoot for the short end of that, and with the help of Wilson rehabbed hard throughout last fall and all winter before being cleared from rehab about midway through the 2019 season.

“Looking back, I probably should have just red-shirted, but I chose to work through it,” Snyder said. “When I heard I was cleared from rehab, I was like, ‘OK, I’m ready, let’s go,’ but that was not the case. I needed more time, I needed to face more hitters, I needed more practice, basically.”

Snyder was able to play in just three games, two in March and one in May, and though he was credited with the victory in the middle one, he needed more time that wasn’t available for the injury-plagued Hilltoppers.

“We had a rough time with injuries last season,” he said, “and there wasn’t much chance for me to get work in, in case I’d run one inside and break somebody’s hand or something because we were running so short on bodies as it was. It took me a while to get comfortable, and that put me behind the 8-ball a little bit. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, really. It was just that I was coming off rehab and the team is trying to win ballgames.

“It was a difficult position to be in, because that selfish side comes out because I’m trying to get better and the only way to do that was to be on the mound, and the only way I could get that is in a game we’re blowing someone out or are getting blown out ourselves. Otherwise, they’re not going to throw me out there, say, in a close one-run game, so the appearances just weren’t there.

“At the end of the season, there was something of a falling out, and I felt the best thing for me was to get a fresh start. … I felt I have one year left, let’s put myself in the very best situation I can.”

And that’s where the UIS Prairie Stars and Copeland come in.

Formerly a pitcher in the St. Louis Cardinals organization, Copeland was an assistant coach with the Illinois Indians summer ball team in 2014 when Snyder was with that club and Evan’s brother, Mason, was with Louisville that year. The next year, in 2015, Copeland joined the staff at his collegiate alma mater, Illinois State University, when Mason transferred there from Heartland, and through that family connection tried to recruit Evan to UIS before he chose Western Kentucky.

At that time, Copeland was the Stars pitching coach as the school went 149-70-1 over the last four years, including last season when his staff was 18th in the nation with a 3.38 team ERA.

Having maintained a friendship with Copeland in the five years since, it’s a small wonder that when Snyder started thinking about moving on from WKU, he thought of Copeland and the program at UIS, which lost four of its starting pitchers from last year, including Andrew Dean, an 18th-round draft choice of the San Diego Padres in June.

“Evan is a winner,” Copeland said. “He’s very, very talented, a big, strong kid who has always thrown very, very hard. We’ve had him at 93 (miles per hour) before, so we’ll see after the injury he had how his velocity comes around. But he has a really sharp breaking ball, and he’s as competitive as a kid can be. If he can come back from the surgery he had and can throw strikes like he always has, he has a chance to be really, really good in our weekend rotation. He’s a dynamic arm and has really good stuff, and we think he can help us.

“He’s worked his butt off in the rehab process, and he’s eager to get back on the mound against live hitters, so when he gets here in the fall, he’ll have a lot to prove to himself, that he’s every bit as good now as when he was with Parkland. That chip on his shoulder, the stuff he has and his competitiveness, I can see him coming in and solidifying our weekend rotation.”

Snyder, who is still on track academically to complete his degree in criminal justice but would welcome the chance to play professionally should this season work out, is overjoyed to be not only going to a program with a winning tradition, but one that because of Copeland's philosophically fits the training methods to which he’s accustomed.

“I thought about trying to get some innings in this summer,” Snyder said, “but I decided after last season ended to take some time off, ease back into it and space it out a little bit, and that’s where UIS helped. I knew I had a place to go. Now I have the whole fall to keep working and kind of find myself all over again, then go into the final spring here with all the chips on the table.

“Starter, long relief, short relief, it doesn’t really matter to me, just as long as I can contribute. Then we’ll see what happens from there.”