Former UMN Crookston Baseball Player Buttermore’s Legacy Lives On
[ad_1]
A young man strides to the mound, winds up and delivers the ball to home plate, with his tongue peeking out of his mouth in a manner reminiscent of Michael Jordan, he locates the ball and methodically strikes out his opponent. The young man is Trevor Buttermore. He was a lot of things to a lot of different people. A brother, a son, a teammate, a student-athlete, a father, a partner. But through all those titles everything points to one common thread. Buttermore was an amazing man who made an impact on anyone he came into contact with during his young life. He was a goal-driven young man, mature beyond his years, and in many ways unshakeable.
Buttermore was a hard man to dislike as his former teammate and law school contemporary Jesse Jennings put it, “The number one overarching thing I think about with Trevor is you couldn’t find a single person who didn’t like Trevor. Most of us in our life have come upon someone who doesn’t like us. You can’t find anyone that at least didn’t respect Trevor.”
Buttermore saw his life come to an unfortunate early end in November 2020 due to medical complications. While he is no longer on earth with us, his spirit continues to live on, and this is especially the case within the University of Minnesota Crookston baseball program.
Buttermore first stepped foot with a ball and glove in his hand and into the UMN Crookston community as a freshman in 2012. A native of North St. Paul, Minn. Buttermore had reached out to former Head Coach Chris Vito about an opportunity to play baseball for the Golden Eagles and to pursue his degree in criminal justice. “The minute I started talking to the kid on the phone you could tell he was different from a lot of high school students with his maturity,” Vito said. “That was also something that I got back from his legion coach Ron Adams, who I have known for many years. He said he is just a special young man, very mature. You could see that pretty much from the get-go.”
Buttermore was thrust into a key role right from the get-go on the Minnesota Crookston baseball pitching staff. He pitched 22.0 innings in his first season with 10 appearances. Although it was a tough spot for a freshman, Buttermore, mature beyond his years, stepped right into a necessary role on the staff.
“He was so composed,” Vito stated. “He was so ahead of what a normal 18-19 year old would be and that is not a knock on other kids, he was just a rarity. You could see it in anything he did. He was very poised on the mound. He knew how to pitch. He didn’t just go out there and throw. He knew what to throw and when to throw it. He had a purpose behind everything he did, whether it was academics, athletics. He was always striving to get better, to learn more.”
Vito still goes back to a conversation he had with Buttermore early in his career about what his goals were academically, for baseball, and socially. And Buttermore’s answer still is a response that uniquely stands out in his mind today almost a decade later. “One of his goals academically was that he wanted to find interesting parts of classes that he found uninteresting. I had never heard that before and I haven’t heard it again. It was really a profound statement, especially from a student who was 18-19 years old.”
Vito’s recollections about how unique and special Buttermore’s approach to life and academics were rings true with one of his early interactions with Jennings. It was the beginning of an amazing story in and of its own right, of the connection of two teammates that withstood through baseball, Minnesota Crookston, and on to their time as classmates at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law and into the beginning of both of their law careers.
“I vividly remember one practice he came up to me and I don’t even think I knew his first name at the time,” Jennings remarked. “I remember him coming up and it was something along the lines of ‘I heard you are a criminal justice major? I heard you also want to do something different with that degree and go to law school.’ I had said to him, ‘yeah that is the plan.’ Kind of playing it off. You get those questions and you never know how things are going to play out. He just kind of looked at me and said ‘that is exactly what I want to do. That is exactly why I am here doing this degree and why I wanted to introduce myself.’ It seemed to me from that day on we talked every day. We started texting and we started hanging out more. That was the first semester, fall of his freshman year. We immediately started lining up classes to take together in what would have been spring of 2013. The relationship was formed right there. The confidence he showed to come up and introduce himself and tell me exactly what he wanted to do with his life without hesitation.”
The relationship between Jennings and Buttermore, not only as teammates and classmates, but roommates and best friends continued long after their first encounter as they both became lawyers after attending Mitchell Hamline School of Law together. Throughout their special relationship working on classwork together and lining up classes to take, the number one takeaway he got from his relationship with Buttermore is his approach to life. “In some ways I am OCD and very strict in how I handle things and do things and things hit me pretty hard if they don’t go my way. The one thing he really brought out in me and one thing I was really able to take from his approach is to try to have a little more of a laid back approach and try not to be as uptight. He was always a good example of someone who could take things as serious as someone could. The things he accomplished were incredible, but he always did it with grace. Throughout the time I knew him, he was unshakable in those ways.”
One of the most special moments Jennings recalls as his time spent on the baseball diamond alongside Buttermore is during the 2014 season. The Golden Eagles had just beaten Hillsdale College at Jack Russell Stadium in Clearwater, Fla., for what would prove to be their one win of the season. Jennings made a catch that he still considers unremarkable, but it ultimately helped preserve the win for Buttermore, who went seven innings in the victory, with three strikeouts and no walks. “After we win the game we get back on the bus and Trevor was really excited. He had a smile from ear to ear. He was a sophomore at the time. He had gotten through a pretty difficult freshman experience. For him to get that win I know how important it was to him. Now more than ever it is important to me to think about it. That on top of it being the only win of the year. It is special to think about. I know how much that meant to Trevor.”
The Golden Eagles underwent a coaching change going into Buttermore’s junior year and in walked Head Coach Steve Gust. Gust, with the help of returning players like Jennings and Buttermore was able to usher in a quick turnaround in which the Golden Eagles made it to the NSIC Tournament in 2016, just two years removed from back-to-back one win seasons. Gust’s recollections of how special of a young man Buttermore falls right in line. “You could tell he loved the game of baseball and loved the community and he loved the University,” Gust said. “Trevor was hard working, he was passionate, he was loyal. He had all of the character traits we continue to look for in all of our recruiting classes since he graduated. Trevor had a strong desire for team success and the success of our university. Those are traits that aren’t necessarily high on any coach’s priorities list but they were high on mine and they still are. Those are important traits to have as a person and not only a player.”
It was using those character traits that Buttermore and his teammates were able to achieve a success many people didn’t see possible during the 2016 season. The team won 25 games and made it to St. Cloud, Minn., to compete with the best of the NSIC. It is what makes Buttermore and his fellow seniors a special group to this day in the mind of Coach Gust. “It was really a special group and I can’t take any credit for getting them here because almost all of them were here when I came here,” Gust stated. “You have to give Coach Vito a lot of credit for bringing in those types of student-athletes. Second of all, you have to give those guys a lot of credit with the adjustment they made to a new coach. They bought in 100 percent from day one, including Trevor. Those guys are a special group of individuals. They have a special place in my heart and Trevor was one of those guys. Those guys would do anything and everything for the betterment of our program or the University of Minnesota Crookston.”
Buttermore would go on to big things after graduating in 2016 with a criminal justice degree from Minnesota Crookston. He would follow his former teammate Jennings to law school at Mitchell Hamline School of Law. He would become a father shortly after the season as fellow UMN Crookston grad Marissa Hill, his girlfriend and long-time partner, gave birth to their oldest daughter Aubrey in May of 2016. Jennings would move in with Buttermore and Hill in September of 2016 and lived with them until July of 2018, getting a unique view of Buttermore as a law student and a father.
“He was the ultimate Dad,” Jennings stated. “You never saw the guy lose his cool. He was patient and extremely caring and totally understanding and compassionate. He appreciated my relationship with Aubrey and I appreciated the respect he gave with our relationship. The fact that he wanted his best friend to have a relationship with his daughter. I enjoyed it at the same time. It was a special deal for the both of us. He and I spent a lot of time together, either studying, playing video games, or spending time with Aubrey. It was fun and enjoyable to see the kind of Dad he was on the fly. It was pretty impressive how quickly he became a great Dad.”
Buttermore got his J.D. from Mitchell Hamline School of Law in 2019 and had begun a career as an associate attorney at de Beer & Associates, P.A. in Lake Elmo, Minn. He had achieved his long-held dream of being a lawyer and was living with Hill in North St. Paul, with his three daughters Aubrey, and twins Emersyn and Oaklyn. It was on the twin’s birthday that Jennings last saw Buttermore in September of 2020.
“It was the twin’s birthday in September. It was their one-year birthday. It was the first time I met the twins and what turned out to be the last time I had seen him. It was kind of crazy. It was the longest he and I had gone without seeing each other since his senior year of college. We always talked. I didn’t see him like I would have normally because of COVID. I was on the fence about going up there for his birthday. It isn’t an easy drive from Mankato. But it was long overdue. We were on the verge about calling it in. We ended up making it and I am so glad that we did.”
It was two months later that the calls came to both of Buttermore’s former coaches Vito and Gust that things weren’t looking good with their former student-athlete. Buttermore had been in the hospital and shortly thereafter he passed away at the young age of 27. “I would imagine it was like hearing the news about your own kid,” Gust remarked. “I remember when I got the call from Marcus “Soup” Campbell, it was just devastating. I didn’t know what to do. I just sat there. Trevor had always been one of those guys that had been close to my heart because of what he did both on the field and off the field. It was just heartbreaking, that is the only way to describe it.”
“Cody Pamperin had given me a call out of the blue last fall and told me what was going on,” Vito remembered. “I could immediately tell in his voice that something was wrong. When he told me what was going on, I almost fell over. I needed to know more. I did not see this happening. It wasn’t long after that. I prayed and I held out hope, but it wasn’t long after that Trevor passed. I won’t forget that day. I won’t ever forget it.”
As Buttermore’s former sports information director during his time at Minnesota Crookston, I had a similar reaction when I first heard from Coach Gust and then from several of his teammates that Buttermore had passed away. All the emotions, disbelief, regret in not having reached out to him recently. But at the end of the day his legacy lives on. Whether it was his unshakeable nature or just the impact he had on those around him. A plaque honoring him was presented to Hill and one will also be a permanent fixture at Minnesota Crookston’s baseball field. Buttermore is one of the members of a group that set the groundwork for a culture of success still going strong at Minnesota Crookston as the Golden Eagles have gone on to three more NSIC Tournaments, including falling one game short of the NSIC Championship Game last May. While it will remain sad to know he is gone, he will never truly be gone. His legacy lives on within the baseball program, within his family, and within the countless people he touched throughout his life. Thank you Trevor for everything you gave this university and the baseball program.
[ad_2]
Source link
