There was a centralized goal that Ty Waid had in mind prior to the start of his senior season at Texarkana, and it involved the same state championship aspirations that every other high school player around Arkansas has.
But there was one other objective the three-time all-state selection had his eyes on that everyone in the Razorback baseball program could appreciate.
“Man I really wanted to hit 15 home runs this year,” Waid said. “That was a big goal of mine, but I only hit 13 so I came up a little short of that. I was still happy with the 13 that I did hit, though.”
Waid wasn’t the only one happy about his offensive production. In fact, everything Waid did turned out to be a plus for Texarkana.
The University of Arkansas signee performed at the highest of levels in a number of ways to help his team come within a game of playing for a state trophy. That multi-faceted aspect is what made Waid one of the top players in the country as well as the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette All-Arkansas Preps Baseball Player of the Year.
The 6-2, 215-pounder, who’s ranked among the nation’s top catchers according to Perfect Game, was deadly with his bat after hitting .443. He had an on-base percentage of .670 and drove in 36 runs for Texarkana, which finished 21-5 and reached the semifinal round of the postseason for the first time since 2013. Waid’s swing was so imposing that of the 42 walks he drew, 23 of those were intentional.
“I really wanted to cut down on my swings and misses,” he said. “I worked on a lot of barrel control stuff in order to make me a much better hitter than what I’d been in the past. All in all, I think all of that helped me out a lot at the plate.”
He helped himself even more as Texarkana’s ace pitcher. Waid went 10-0 and had an ERA of .900 while notching 116 strikeouts and issuing only 18 walks in 70 innings of work. He also found time to record a save as well.
But none of what Wait did was unexpected, especially with the way his career started in 2020 during his varsity debut as a freshman. In his first game, he went 2 for 3 with a pair of RBI and caught a one-hitter from current Arkansas pitcher Cody Adcock. Since that outing, his status and skill level has elevated.
His ability to hit and catch was evident early, as evidenced by Arkansas offering him a scholarship only a few months after he played his first game as a ninth grader, but he didn’t necessarily envision himself becoming a top-notch pitcher, at least initially.
“I never really took [pitching] seriously until probably the last two years,” Waid explained. “It wasn’t until then that I actually started working on my mechanics and things like that, which improved a lot. My [velocity] started going up a little bit, too. So I started to really take pride in it.”
That pride carried over into the season, Wait said, but it wasn’t relegated to just him. Texarkana missed out on the playoffs a year ago and welcomed in a new coach in June of 2022 when Trent Wilson was hired after Layne Berry resigned. But it wasn’t the fear of the unknown with a new coach that sparked a Razorback resurgence of sorts.
“There wasn’t a whole lot that had to be said coming into the year,” Waid noted. “We wanted to play well. The main thing was that everyone bought in, everyone knew that we’d have a shot at making a run despite how last year went. So everyone put a lot of extra work in.
“We had guys stay after practice, taking extra ground balls or getting in the [batting] cage more. Everyone wanted to be out there, and that kind of led to us having more fun. Last year, everyone was more straight faced about things, but this year we all enjoyed just being out there and around each other. That made it a lot easier to play for each other as well.”
That’s not to say their new skipper didn’t have a hand in what Texarkana was able to accomplish.
Wilson was previously the head coach at Warren before taking over for Berry, but Waid said he knew early on that he and his teammates would have no trouble adjusting to a new voice in the dugout.
“He was the coach we needed,” he said of Wilson. “Coach Berry was a great coach for us, a great guy. But Coach Wilson is a little different because he’d get in our butts. If we were fooling around in practice or not taking things seriously, he’d light into us. That helped us kind of flip a switch so to speak because everyone knew then that there was a time to play around and there was a time to be serious.”
That refocused mentality led to bigger and better things for Texarkana. The Razorbacks had three separate winning streaks of at least five games. Along the way, Waid consistently provided towering home runs while mowing down batters, all of which led to a 5A-South Conference title, which was the team’s first league crown in 28 years.
However, the next step for Waid involves assisting one of the country’s top collegiate teams. Arkansas’ 2023 recruiting class is ranked No. 1 nationally by Perfect Game and features a boatload of players that are expected to eventually play professionally.
Waid has those same intentions and mentioned that he’s anxious to get to Fayetteville to officially begin that process.
“Growing up, I was raised an Arkansas fan,” said Waid, whose father Billy played for Razorbacks Coach Dave Van Horn in the early 1990s at Texarkana Community College. “Being able to get the opportunity to play for them is just unbelievable. It’s definitely what I’ve worked for since I was a kid, and it’s definitely a dream come true.”
Waid At a Glance
SCHOOL Texarkana
CLASS Senior
POSITION Pitcher/Catcher
NOTEWORTHY Had a slugging percentage of 1.230 and an on-base plus slugging percentage of 1.899. … Committed to the University of Arkansas in 2020 on the same day he was offered a scholarship. … Rated the No. 1 overall prospect and catcher in the state by Perfect Game. … Blasted two home runs and struck out 13 in a 13-5 victory over 2022 Class 6A state champion Conway on March 25.