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Famous encounter

CVCS grad recalls practice visit from Costner while at The Citadel

Submitted Photo Randy Carlson, a 1997 Cassadaga Valley graduate and assistant coach with The Citadel’s 2009 baseball team, is pictured here following a practice in Charleston, S.C. Pictured at center is actor Kevin Costner.

Randy Carlson’s love for sports is obvious. All one has to do is check out his content on Facebook and Twitter. Heck, if he’s not fashioning some New York Mets gear, you’ll likely find him donning a Buffalo Bills jersey. And after ESPN premiered “The Last Dance” earlier this spring, the 1997 Cassadaga Valley Central School graduate’s running commentary might have suggested he was the president of the Michael Jordan Fan Club.

But Randy’s passion isn’t merely displayed within the confines of his Charleston, South Carolina home or on his social media content. In fact, if you’re looking to ride shotgun with someone on a road trip, he’s your guy, because it’s amazing the places you might find yourself in.

Cameron Indoor Stadium, home of the Duke Blue Devils? Randy’s been there.

Citi Field in Queens? You can’t be a Mets’ fan if you don’t check out the home ballpark, right?

New Era Field in Orchard Park? Randy has season tickets for the Bills this year. It’s of little consequence to the 41-year-old that the distance between Charleston and One Bills Drive is 856 miles. One way.

Yet for all the adventures that the proprietor of East Coast Baseball Academy in Charleston has had through the years, the one that happened in 2009 might top the list. Then an assistant baseball coach at The Citadel, South Carolina’s military college, Randy and the team were in the middle of practice at College Park when the unexpected happened.

As the Bulldogs were taking cuts in the cage, two of the Citadel’s top pitchers — Wes Wrenn and Asher Wojciechowski were retrieving baseballs behind the outfield wall. Fortunately for them, they were obscured from view by the windscreen fence. With that as their guise, Wrenn and Woj decided to slip away and check out the site of a movie that was being filmed nearby. The star of “The New Daughter” horror flick was none other than Kevin Costner.

“Wes was the ace,” Randy said. “He gets this idea that they’re going to take off down the street and go looking for where they’re filming this movie. They start hopping fences and they end up in the backyard where the movie was being filmed.”

As luck would have it, Costner walked out the backdoor of the house, greeted the two Citadel hurlers and asked, according to Randy, “What are you guys doing, playing softball or something?'”

Given an opening with one of the biggest stars of the silver screen, Wrenn and Wojciechowski told Costner they were members of The Citadel’s baseball team and invited Costner to take batting practice at their practice field. Unfortunately, Costner had to decline because of his obligations to the movie.

So Wrenn and Wojciechowski decided to return to practice.

“They run back and word kind of gets around what they had done,” Randy said. “It was a Thursday and our team chaplain was talking to guys for a little while. The guys are sitting out in center field and, all of a sudden, one of our pitchers looks up and he’s like, ‘He came, he really came!’

“All the guys look at the right-field fence and Kevin Costner and his bodyguard are walking through the gate.”

Costner shook hands with the head coach, told a couple stories and then he was invited to take some cuts. Randy said he estimates he hung around for about 20 minutes.

“I’ll tell you what, he was pretty good,” Randy said. “He switch-hit and he was good from both sides of the plate. It was a pretty cool experience.”

Eleven years later, that encounter still resonates, prompting Randy to post a photo to Facebook and Twitter of the team surrounding Costner. Smiles are everywhere.

“Coach never even said anything to (Wrenn and Wojciechowski),” Randy said. “They were good kids. We never would have known (they had left practice) had Kevin Costner not shown up.”

But show up he did, which allowed Randy to add another chapter to a sports odyssey that appears to have no end.

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