Feature image top: The men’s wrestling program at Little Rock, which competes in the Pac 12, has become one of the school’s most successful sports.
It was a warm day in July, and there was Chris Curry, walking onto a field that had driven everybody else off.
An Arkansas native, Curry moved intently up the collegiate baseball ladder after finishing a seven-year minor league career. He broke in at Hendrix College in Conway in 2007 and steadily moved up until that July day in 2014 when he was named head baseball coach of the Little Rock Trojans.
Curry’s celebration over becoming a Division 1 head baseball coach was muted. The Trojans’ home facility, Gary Hogan Field, was not even on the Little Rock campus and badly needed refurbishing. The prior season’s players had split, having played under the shadow of a verbal abuse scandal involving then-coach Scott Norwood.
The program’s relationship with the state’s high schools was iffy at best. Between the ascendancy of Dave Van Horn’s program at Arkansas and the always-popular Arkansas Travelers close by, the Trojans program was getting squeezed out of baseball media coverage. Worst of all, membership in the football-centric Sun Belt Conference was taking its toll, and Little Rock was out of place against larger SBC programs located in talent-rich states such as Texas and Florida.
“Nobody wanted the job,” Curry said. “The program was down. They had a change in leadership for not-good reasons. That’s well documented. That’s not my opinion; that’s factual. It was in a tough place.”
Trojan fans celebrate at an NCAA tournament-selection watch party for the baseball team at Waldo’s in Little Rock.
Today, there is a framed photo of the Little Rock baseball team in the conference room that Chancellor Christina Drale uses to meet with staff and visitors. The picture shows the Trojans celebrating as a team, having completed a mad five-game run to the Ohio Valley Conference tournament championship. Curry’s team would go on to win the first NCAA tournament game in program history and then garner national attention after beating eventual national champion LSU in the Baton Rouge regional.
Drale will probably need more shelf space soon. Little Rock athletics, long an afterthought in sports outside basketball, is experiencing a resurgence not seen in program history. A new conference and a new athletics administration has galvanized the Trojans program, Little Rock finishing in a close second in the all-sports OVC Commissioners Cup a year ago and just barely missing the top spot again for the 2024-2025 athletics season.
Trojans guard Johnathan Lawson has helped take
Little Rock to the top of the OVC.
Having finished his first full season as Little Rock’s athletic director, Frank Cuervo, is not sitting still. With Drale’s support, Cuervo has decided now is the time to comprehensively review all aspects of the Trojans program. Facilities are getting a hard look, and efforts at donor engagement have redoubled. At the center of it all is the Trojan Athletic Fund, a comprehensive push for donations with the goals of improving facilities, retaining and compensating student athletes, and maintaining Little Rock’s newfound spot at the top of the OVC.
The question remains: Will it be enough?
“In order to support our programs at a high level, you’ve got to have a team behind the team,” Cuervo said, “and we didn’t have that. We had a number of vacancies and voids in certain areas that are critical — in marketing, in sales, in fundraising.”
Cuervo brought on athletic advancement veteran Dan Crowley as deputy director of athletics, and he will be riding shotgun with Cuervo in matters of donor relations. Cuervo also hired central Arkansas sports-media veteran Nate Olson to increase the visibility and promotion of the Trojans program.
At the end of the day, it is all about the money, and it is all about what Cuervo and Drale want to do with it. A few moves have already been made, such as the women’s soccer program receiving new field turf with heat-reducing technology at the school’s Coleman Sports & Recreation Complex.
Keeping Little Rock in the running for more OVC Commissioner’s Cups will require more than a fresh coat of paint.
Little Rock baseball coach Chris Curry and his team were welcomed back to campus after winning the OVC tournament and earning an NCAA bid.
“I won’t mince words,” Drale said. “Most of our salaries are below market, below the average market rate for similar positions at similar institutions. Now, in the Ohio Valley Conference, we’re either toward the top or toward the middle in those salary comparisons.”
Head coaches leaving for better jobs is not the worst thing — it means the program is winning — but the telling statistic is overall coaching staff retention. Finding a salary bump for assistant coaches ensures staff continuity in all sports, a major benefit in the recruiting process.
“I think continuity is super important,” said women’s soccer coach Kelly Farrell. “Money talks at the end of the day. I think investment in that side is really important.”
Of course, nowadays, coaches are not the only ones visiting the administration building with open wallets. The recently-passed House v. NCAA settlement threw the doors open for schools to pay their own athletes. Little Rock quickly opted in on the settlement, and with spending allowed to be up to $20.5 million per school annually, Trojans coaches want as big of a bank as possible.
“You can thank the NCAA for that,” men’s basketball coach Darrell Walker said. “They were greedy. They had temporary athletes for 60 years and didn’t give one athlete anything. If they had given every athlete $5,000, guys would be jumping out of the dorm room and going crazy, but they didn’t do that. They kept it for themselves, and now the genie’s out of the bottle. You got to pay players.”
Curry, like Walker, is more than happy to dole out university money to attract and keep the best baseball players possible. Unlike Walker, whose team practices and plays in the still-opulent Jack Stephens Center, Curry is asking for more.
Little Rock AD Frank Cuervo and Chancellor Christina Drale, shown at the press conference announcing his 2024 hiring, have gone ‘all chips in’ on athletics.
“Frank Cuervo and Chancellor Drale are going all chips in,” Curry said. “On revenue sharing and opting in, there are some schools in the state that won’t. They are not opting in, and that’s OK. That’s OK. Our scenario is that we’re all in, and that’s huge. What do we need? We need a new stadium on campus. We need it, and Frank knows it.”
Cuervo said in April he and university administration will be taking a hard look at Little Rock’s current athletics facilities. On one end is the Stephens Center, which still largely looks brand new after 20 years of housing both basketball programs and the women’s volleyball program. Walker said the building could use a new practice court, and women’s basketball coach Steve Wiedower said he would not mind a little extra space for the weight room and coaches’ offices. Both coaches agree that, unlike Curry, they have few pressing needs.
Drale and men’s basketball coach Darrell Walker celebrated the Trojans’ 2024 OVC regular season title.
“We’ve done a great job of taking care of it,” Wiedower said. “The administration has done a good job keeping it what it is, and I think it’s one of the best facilities in the state.”
Curry’s need for a new stadium highlights an issue that goes beyond money — space. There is a reason the baseball facilities are off campus, and while not impossible, finding enough room on Little Rock’s metropolitan campus will be a challenge.
“I’m really very supportive of a master plan for athletic facilities that we will fold into a master plan for the whole campus,” Drale said, “but we’re not waiting for that. We’re already finding ways to upgrade.”
Infielder Cooper Chaplain and the Trojans baseball team made program history in 2025.
Cuervo is looking at the space issue, particularly as it pertains to baseball. He is quick to point out that an on-campus stadium in the barest sense will not cut it. Improvements have been made throughout Curry’s tenure to training and clubhouse facilities for the players, and anything new would have to include infrastructure for developing talent.
Cuervo is undaunted, and better yet, he thinks he can find some spare land if needed.
“The main question would be if we look for a new facility for baseball, where would that be?” Cuervo said. “There are a couple of options. There’s land the university has in its portfolio. That’s part of what this master plan will help unveil. Do we have enough land in certain areas? Then if we build on it, what’s the impact to the athletics program, the campus community and the Little Rock area at large?”
Maximus, the Trojan mascot, is the face of a Little Rock athletics resurgence.
There is a good chance none of those conversations, much less an ambitious capital campaign, would be taking place were Little Rock still locked into the Sun Belt Conference. As the conference grew, the Trojans program found itself as the lone nonfootball member and near the bottom of the league in terms of university size. There is still football in the OVC but not at the FBS level like in the Sun Belt.
Little Rock administrators and coaches alike remain thrilled with OVC membership and credit it with helping spark the present turnaround.
“It became clear to us that this was not a great fit,” said Drale, who added that the total time Trojans student athletes have been traveling and away from classes has been cut with OVC membership. “We really needed to look for a conference that was more basketball-centric and also more geographically accessible, and the OVC fit that bill.”
Now that the Trojans have found a home, the university is betting more Commissioner’s Cups are in the future.
“Overall, the athletic department is upbeat,” Walker said. “All the coaches have bought into what everybody’s trying to do, and we all cheer for each other. It’s just been a blessing to sit here the last couple of years and watch people win championships, and man, it’s been amazing, to be honest about it.”
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