The baseball media guide will tell you KC Serna is a six-foot, 185-pound freshman from Ventura, Calif. who plays shortstop and pitcher. It’ll tell you he graduated from St. Bonaventure High School in 2008, and was a stellar athlete in football, soccer and baseball.
What the media guide won’t help you understand is what type of player or person Serna is. It won’t tell you he has such a strong arm that he almost threw a sprinting runner out from his knees from the edge of the outfield grass.
What the book won’t tell you is he’s a gifted athlete who loves helping out with kids’ clinics after Duck games and he’s struggled recently with his confidence and finding the right level of cockiness and swagger in his game.
Serna has butted heads with head coach George Horton and the staff recently, because Horton perceived him as too arrogant and selfish. He thought Serna needed a little bit more guidance than most to buy into the team aspect of the game.
“Our mindset was, here’s a kid that has a bunch of ability, wants to be a leader on the team, players like him, but was telling us, ‘Hey, I’m going to do it my way,’” Horton said.
Serna says it really wasn’t arrogance.
“No. I’m just trying to go out there to have fun,” he said.
“We kind of went like this a lot,” Horton said, pounding his two fists together. “He did some knucklehead stuff, and I would yell at him more than I would anyone else on the team. Showing the team, I’m boss, KC’s not.”
Even the players noticed the way Serna did things at first.
“In high school, it was kind of like he was the guy, and he could get away with whatever, and sometimes he would disappear in drills,” infielder Danny Pulfer said. “But he’s definitely fixed that. He’s a grinder and he gets after it. He’s been great so far. KC is a good guy.”
Pulfer, who grew up not far from Serna in Cypress, Calif., said Serna has his own way about him, though.
“Baseball players all have a certain swag to them and cockiness,” Pulfer said. “In the fall, it was like, ‘Is this kid really going to be like this?’ But that’s just the kind of guy KC is, and once you see what he can do on the field, you know he can back it up.”
Then it all boiled over in the series finale against Oregon State on March 29. With the score 8-0 in favor of OSU in the bottom of the fifth inning, Serna took a lead from first base and tried to steal second base. He was picked off, and when he came back to the dugout, Horton was not happy.
“It was like, what the heck were you thinking KC?” Horton said. “Where did we miscommunicate? I lit him up pretty good in the dugout.”
Finally on Friday, the coaches and Serna sat down for a three-hour meeting to clear the air and figure things out. Serna confided in Horton that he was losing his confidence a little bit, and Horton realized he’d been too tough on the kid.
“Here’s a kid that plays with flair and confidence and swagger, and I misread his cockiness or arrogance or lack of conformity as rebellious,” Horton said. “Where it was in essence an athlete losing his confidence. He needed me to support him, and I was throwing gas on the fire.”
“We were just trying to figure each other out,” Serna said. “Him trying to get to know me better, me trying to get to know him better. It was about our relationship as a player and a coach. Things are good.”
In the meeting, Horton challenged Serna to be the best player on the field at all times, in practice and in the games. Horton believes he can be a great player by the time he’s finished at Oregon. Even though he’s struggling with the bat now, batting .231 at the start of the week, Horton told Serna that if he’s confident, things will turn around.
“Coach told me, I was trying to get 10 hits in one at bat,” Serna said. “So I’m just trying to stay within myself and know that I can do it and I believe in myself.”
“He’s got great tools. He can run, he’s got a good arm, good instincts, and he can swing,” Horton said. “I’ve coached some great players at Cal State Fullerton, and KC reminds me of Mark Kotsay. Kotsay was a three-sport star, won at everything in his life, and everything came easy to him, but the thing that made Mark magical was that he was the best practice player, and made the people around him better because of his competitiveness. I mapped that out for KC.”
That meeting might have been the best thing to happen to the Ducks all year. Serna came out a more confident player who knew his role, and Horton finally figured out one of his best players.
In the Stanford series, Serna went 3-for-9 with two hits Sunday, including a double and a home run. He scored twice, and overall simply played with a renewed purpose.
He looks to continue the upswing when the Ducks travel to Southern California – his home – to play the USC Trojans starting Thursday.
“It’ll be pretty cool,” Serna said.
Ventura is just north of Los Angeles, so he will have a lot of friends and family there.
“I’m trying to treat it just like another game, though,” he said. “We all try to do that as a team, not getting too pumped for any one game because we have so many. But it’s going to be nice being in So-Cal again. The weather … and the girls.”
The part about the weather and the girls he said with a smile, and that is the type of person Serna is. On the field he’s a cocky competitor, but after the game he’s all smiles.
“He’s like a puppy dog,” Horton said. “He has a ton of energy, and he’s a good kid. I think he is going to be a brilliant baseball player one day.”
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