Bryce Suters transferred back to the Shenandoah Valley to finish his college baseball career, and being familiar with coaches at Bridgewater College made the difference.
After one season at both JMU and Potomac State, the Broadway High School graduate felt comfortable with Eagles pitching coach Austin Nicely, a Spotswood grad who pitched in the minors for the Houston Astros, and Fort Defiance High School graduate Ben Spotts, the veteran head coach at BC.
“Coming back here, I had known Coach Nicely my whole life,” Suters said after a game this spring with Mary Baldwin. “I worked out with him in high school. I had known Coach Spotts for a long time. Coach Nicely contacted me; I talked to him for a while and came here for a visit. I knew I wanted to come back home.”
After hitting .302 with two homers for the Eagles as a junior, Suters stepped up his game this year: he paces the Eagles with an average of .401 and has seven homers and 49 RBI while starting all 43 games.
“He has been great. He has played really well this year,” said Spotts, the former head coach at EMU. “He caught fire in the middle of 2025 and carried that over to this year. I saw him early in high school. It worked out that he fell in our lap on the back end (of his college career). He has played really well for us.”
Suters, with JMU in 2022, hit .294 but had only 17 at-bats for a Dukes team that was loaded in the outfield with Chase DeLauter, a first-round pick of Cleveland who is now in the Majors; and Fenwick Trimble, now at Double-A in the Miami Marlins farm system. Other offensive stars were infielder Nick Zona, a former minor leaguer with the Seattle Mariners, and first baseman Kyle Novak, who played pro Indy ball from 2023-2025.
With little playing time as a freshman, Suters transferred to Potomac State.
“When I left JMU, I was looking for a place I could go” and play regularly, he said. “I was not being recruited much out of the transfer portal. I knew some buddies that went to Potomac State. I decided to go there. I would not change my decision for anything. It was really fun.”
In 2024 in 94 at-bats with Potomac State, he hit .309 with two homers for veteran coach Doug Little, in his 29th season at the school this spring.
“To play every day (game) is a blessing,” left fielder Suters said of his two seasons with the Eagles.
Suters is one of several BC players with Division I experience, including former Harrisonburg High School and VCU pitcher Evan Bert; first baseman Cam Nuckols, who is from Chesterfield and also transferred from the Rams program; Broadway grad Bransen Hensley, who originally was headed to West Virginia; and slugger Zack Caldwell (Hickory High), who had been at High Point. He has 13 homers this year after going deep 16 times last year for BC.
The Division III Eagles, ranked nationally most of this year, got a jolt with a trip to California early in the season.
Bridgewater – with Bert on the mound – won 12-4 against ranked Pomona-Pitzer on March 1, and the Eagles were 4-0 on the trip.
“It was big for our team and our program,” Suters said.
The team visited the Rose Bowl, Dodgers Stadium, Hollywood Boulevard and Beverly Hills. The Eagles also saw UCLA baseball play at home when the Bruins were ranked first in Division I.
“It was pretty cool to go out there and have that opportunity with the team and be around different people and take it all in,” Suters said.
Suters studied business at Bridgewater and plans to pursue a career in law enforcement, perhaps with the state police.
ODAC Tournament
Suters scored the winning run in the last of the 12th on May 2 as the No. 4 seed Eagles beat No. 5 seed Washington & Lee in the first game of the best-of-three playoff series. Bert took the loss in Game 2 on Sunday, but the Eagles won the third and deciding game 10-6 later Sunday to advance to the ODAC Championship Weekend at Capital One in Tysons May 7-9.
Suters had two hits and scored a run in the deciding win.
The No. 4 seed Eagles (32-11) will face No. 1 seed and 2023 national champ Lynchburg on Friday at 3 p.m.
No. 2 seed Shenandoah and No. 3 seed Randolph-Macon will meet at 6 p.m. the same day in the double-elimination event.
Per ncaa.org on Monday, Lynchburg was ranked second in the nation, Shenandoah sixth, Bridgewater ninth and Randolph-Macon 20th.
In the coach’s poll through April 26, Lynchburg was second in the nation, Shenandoah seventh and Bridgewater came in at eighth. Randolph-Macon received votes.
Mary Baldwin
Mary Baldwin baseball ended the season 10-27 overall and was paced in hitting by Camden Bauswell at .404. Rocktown High School grad Noel Cano-Rocha was third on the team in hitting at .369.
Lance Gowans of Palmyra and Fork Union Military Academy paced the pitching staff in innings with 63.2, complete games with two and wins with three. The head coach was Scott Hearn, a former Bridgewater College standout who has coached in the Valley Baseball League with Waynesboro and Staunton.
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David Driver
