By Adam Lucas
While growing up on the highly competitive youth baseball fields of Salisbury, North Carolina, Vance Honeycutt was always very aware that his father, Bobby Honeycutt, had played college baseball.
But this isn’t one of those horror stories where the high-achieving father stands behind the batting cage and yells instructions at his son, or forces him to re-listen to stories about the Tar Heel baseball team from 1989 who played in the College World Series. , a squad of which the elder Honeycutt was a member.
Instead, Vance understood his father’s connection to the game for a very different — and very welcome — reason.
“It’s not like he talks about it all the time,” Vance says. “But I always knew he had a different way of approaching baseball than some of the other parents of guys I played with. From the beginning of Little League and as I got older, his advice was always different.
“The difference is he always understood that the game is hard. He knows that hitting is hard and if you fail seven times out of ten, you’re in the Hall of Fame. He instilled that in me very young.”
Of course, Honeycutt spent most of his career in Carolina making the game deceptively easy. He was one of the most exciting freshmen in the game in 2022, a third-team All-America pick and a consensus Freshman All-America. Given the circumstances, he made one of the best catches in Boshamer Stadium history in the ninth inning of a one-run regional playoff game, denying Georgia a game-tying home run by leaping to catch a ball that hovered over center field. fence.
These types of dazzling catches were a regular feature of his final two seasons, earning him back-to-back ACC Defensive Player of the Year awards in 2023 and 2024. Offensively, he is the all-time leader in matter of Carolina’s home run, a mark that stood for almost 40 years. And as Boshamer regulars know, even if you completely ignore the raw numbers, he’s simply one of the most fun players to watch in Tar Heels history.
Making these types of highlight plays is the fulfillment of a childhood dream for young Honeycutt. Bobby and his wife, former Tar Heel athlete Leah Ann, brought their family (Vance has two older sisters, Kayla and Julia) to Chapel Hill at every opportunity. Family and friends had Carolina football parking passes in the RV lot across from the Smith Center; Vance spent many Saturday afternoons throwing a football at tailgate parties (and later became a state championship-winning quarterback at Salisbury High).
Eventually, he would take his fandom down Ridge Rd. to Boshamer Stadium, where he attended many Carolina baseball games with his father. “We were always on campus,” Bobby says. “All of our children, including Vance, knew we were a Caroline family.”
It was not unusual for these trips to Chapel Hill to include meetings with some of Bobby Honeycutt’s former Tar Heel teammates. As often happens, a winning team — the 1989 Tar Heels were Carolina’s only participants in Omaha for nearly 30 years — has a way of staying in touch, and Honeycutt still counts a half-dozen members of that team among his closest friends.
But while Bobby Honeycutt was very clear with his son that cheering for the Tar Heels was non-negotiable, he was more open-minded when it came to seeing Vance play sports.
“It was important for me, as a father, not to confine him to just one sport,” Bobby explains. “I promised myself that if he was interested in other sports, we would give him the opportunity to be exposed to those sports.”
So while other middle schoolers were playing on several school and travel baseball teams, the future Carolina center fielder was playing recreational baseball to have time to play other sports. As a result, even during his early high school years, Vance was not part of baseball’s elite travel circuit which, until recent adjustments to the recruiting calendar, sometimes saw players commit to college before playing a high school game.
But Salisbury is a city with deep baseball roots. So while Vance was experiencing a growth spurt during his sophomore year, his high school coach, Mike Herndon, connected the family with the South Charlotte Panthers, one of the most prestigious and competitive travel programs in the east of the country.
It hasn’t always been easy. Vance wasn’t as tall as some of his teammates, many of whom had already committed to playing college baseball. But his athleticism and skill level were unquestionable. And eventually, a growth spurt began to put his size on par with his talent. Bobby Honeycutt remembers an afternoon spent around the batting cage at a travel tournament, watching the Panthers do some pregame hacks. His son was creating some of the loudest swings of the day, and the implications were clear. South Charlotte owner Don Hutchens approached him. “See,” Hutchens said, “I told you he was going to grow up.”
Prospect camps are a legitimate recruiting tool in college baseball. Honeycutt attended two, including one at the College of Charleston, where the Cougars are coached by Bobby Honeycutt’s former teammate Chad Holbrook. And the other in Carolina.
There were other players present in Chapel Hill with greater reputations according to national scouting services. But none made a bigger impression than Honeycutt, who caught the eye of former Carolina head coach Mike Fox with his unique blend of ability and potential.
“After that camp, Coach Fox waved us into the lobby of Boshamer Stadium and started talking to us,” Bobby said. “His comments about Vance far exceeded our expectations. I remember getting in the car after that, and it was a really good father-son moment. We looked at each other and said, ‘I can’t don’t believe this just happened.'”
“We got in the car and I was super excited,” Vance says. “I smiled the whole car ride home.”
After that, Vance’s career path accelerated. He soon received an official scholarship offer from Carolina, which he of course accepted. His success on the field attracted the attention of professional teams. Bobby handled most of the discussions with scouts as his son finished high school, and the family made it clear that Vance wanted to become a Tar Heel. Yet the San Francisco Giants selected him in the 20th round. It was a futile choice; Vance wanted to spend his years from 18 to 21 improving while enjoying campus, not riding the bus through the minor leagues.
His time in Chapel Hill has resulted in a string of incredible plays, including Saturday’s do-it-all performance in Saturday’s 2-1 win over West Virginia. Of all the highlights he’s had during his Tar Heel career, his favorites remain the team accomplishments: winning the 2022 ACC Tournament, winning the 2022 Chapel Hill Regional and now making it to the College World Series 2024.
The team’s ultimate achievement is making it to Omaha as a Tar Heel this year. And as his father knows well, the calendar falls such that securing one of the eight spots in the College World Series almost always coincides with Father’s Day.
“Calmly, I thought about it,” Bobby said. “My former teammates and I talked about it among ourselves and said how cool it would be for all of us to go back to Omaha. I haven’t been on any of Carolina’s other trips.”
Now he’ll have the chance to go back and watch another Honeycutt try to lead the Tar Heels to a national championship.
