Alex Madera brought a hoagie with him to his first scrimmage at North Carolina, stopping on his way to the field to grab lunch just like he did the previous four years at Arcadia University. A Division III baseball player is responsible for everything from a pregame meal to raking the field, so Madera made a habit of eating a Wawa order — Italian hoagie with bacon — before playing for Arcadia.
Madera, who grew up in Delran, Burlington County, transferred to North Carolina last summer, using his final year of eligibility at one of college baseball’s premier programs. He knew that the competition in Division I would be stiffer, and the work more intense. But no one told the former D-III star that he didn’t have to stop at Subway.
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“I’m unwrapping my sandwich and they’re like, ‘Why did you get food?’ I said, ‘Aren’t we eating before pregame?’” Madera said. “They said, ‘No. Pregame meal means they have food for us.’ I was like, ‘Ah. No way. That’s a lot different than what I’m used to.’ They said, ‘You didn’t have that?’ No, I didn’t.”
Madera left Delran High without a Division I scholarship offer but is now just two wins from reaching the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. He was a Division III All-American at Arcadia, the small private college in Glenside, where he hit .432 over four seasons and was twice the Middle Atlantic Conference player of the year.
That success continued at North Carolina. Madera is hitting .304 with an .804 OPS. He delivered the winning hit on Monday to topple visiting Louisiana State, the defending national champions, and move on to this weekend’s Super Regional against West Virginia. The winner of the three-game series advances to the College World Series.
It’s been a dream, Madera said. And, the food is catered.
“Every day is such a blessing and a privilege to be here,” Madera said. “It’s absolutely incredible, and I’m forever grateful to have this opportunity.”
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Getting a chance
Madera was a standout at Delran, but he was just 5-foot-9 and 145 pounds.
“For a college recruiter, that’s not going to jump off the page,” said Bryan Torresani, who coached him at Arcadia.
He had a chance to play Division I baseball at St. Joseph’s, but the Hawks gave their last scholarship to another player. They told Madera that he could walk on. He declined, believing that it would take a few seasons there before he saw playing time. Madera considered stepping away from baseball and just going to college. But he said he loved the game too much to quit.
He heard from Arcadia after one of the team’s assistant coaches spotted him at a travel tournament. It wasn’t Division I, but it was a chance to play. He toured the campus, met the staff, and signed on.
“I loved my time there,” Madera said. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was awesome. All the guys there were great. I made some of my best friends there for the rest of my life. It’s been an incredible journey.”
The Knights stopped at Wawa, raked the fields, carried their bags, and traveled on buses for as long as nine hours. It was no frills. For Madera, it was just fine. He emerged as one of the premier hitters in D-III while also helping to manicure the basepath.
“We all had postgame jobs,” he said. “My job was to rake the outer edge dirt where the dirt met the outfield grass.”
Madera hit .389 as a sophom*ore, a year after the pandemic limited the 2020 season to just 12 games. It was obvious then that the kid who left Delran without a scholarship could play at a high level. First, he needed to learn how to channel his emotions.
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“I saw a lot of myself in Alex,” Torresani said. “We both have Italian bloodlines that run hot a little bit.”
Madera played the game as a freshman with a temper, allowing each out to drag him down. A frustrating at-bat would lead to a fielding error, as Madera could not simply move on from disappointment. For him to succeed, that needed to change.
“I had to figure out a way to channel my emotions and flush it,” Madera said. “We had a saying at Arcadia like, ‘It happened. So what? Move on.’ You have to know going into your next at-bat that it’s over and you can’t do anything about it.”
His dream school
Madera entered the transfer portal after his senior year at Arcadia and was granted an extra year of eligibility because of his pandemic-limited freshman season. He heard from some major programs, but the interest seemed tepid. The process was frustrating, as a college coach would email Madera and then never follow up. And then North Carolina — the school he dreamed about going to as a kid — called.
“To their credit, they took him sight unseen,” Torresani said. “They took him off his stats at Arcadia, his stats in the summer, some video, and I guess my word held a little water.”
The adjustment to North Carolina was more than just catered food, as Madera found himself facing pitchers who regularly threw fastballs in the mid-90s and in a lineup where every hitter was just as talented. He wasn’t in Glenside anymore.
“Everyone here is that dude,” Madera said. “Everybody here was the No. 1 player at their previous school. But at the end of the day, it’s all about competing and just being yourself.”
Madera stopped bringing Subway to the field — “I’m not a Subway guy,” Madera conceded — and learned to hold his own against the velocity he faced in the batter’s box. He had multiple hits in five of his first nine games and entered the Super Regional on Friday with a hit in eight of his last 10 games.
Madera played four years of Division III baseball but has looked the part this season of a player who belongs at the top of college baseball. He no longer has to worry about raking the field.
“It’s incredible,” Madera said. “The surface is always immaculate. The grass is like playing on a fairway. It’s insane.”
Bouncing back
North Carolina called on Madera to lay down a sacrifice bunt in the ninth inning Monday against LSU. It was something Madera has done plenty of times in his career. It seemed simple. But he couldn’t get the bunt down and made an out.
It was frustrating, the kind of at-bat that would’ve sent him spiraling as a freshman at Arcadia.
Madera returned to the dugout, and his teammates — “not a single guy was negative” — said the next batter would pick him up. He did and the game was tied, at 3-3. An inning later, Madera got his chance at redemption. He moved on from his failed bunt, channeling his disappointment the way he learned to at Arcadia.
Madera hit a two-out RBI single up the middle after the previous batter was intentionally walked. North Carolina knocked off the defending champs, 4-3. A catered meal was waiting in the clubhouse, the grounds crew would soon take over the field. And a chartered flight will take the Tar Heels to the College World Series if they win two games this weekend.
That, Madera said, would be “the coolest thing in the world.” And he might not be there if it wasn’t for the days he spent in Glenside fueled on Wawa Italian hoagies with bacon.
“They were playing in Miami earlier this season and I asked him how the travel had been,” Torresani said. “He said ‘Coach, we fly charter. The bus pulls up to the plane, we get off, we get on the plane, and we get to Miami.’ I said, ‘You’re living the dream.’ I think he appreciates it. If you go right there, you don’t know any difference and think that’s how it is everywhere in the country. I’m sure Alex is telling his teammates, ‘No, guys. We had to bring our own sandwiches before the game’ and ‘We had to rake the field.’”
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