Ficklin joined the Cougars pitching staff last year following a successful career at the two-year College of Southern Nevada, where he earned an opportunity to represent one of his home state’s two Power Four institutions for third-year skipper Trent Pratt.

That season, which saw BYU finish 28-27 overall and near the bottom of the Big 12, saw Ficklin appear 18 different times with a 3-1 record and 7.79 ERA. It also saw Ficklin left off the team’s callback sheet, and placed him at a brutal crossroads when it came to his professional odds.

Like many of us in times of distress, Ficklin phoned a family friend in search of some advice on what he should do next.

Three years of college baseball and a full summer competing for the Portland Pickles of the West Coast League, a collegiate summer wooden bat founded in 2005, had become Ficklin’s life since graduating from Pine View High School in 2020. After returning from a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he invested everything into the game with the modest goal of simply surrounding himself with the game.

Haven Aurelia Miller, Ogden Raptors

“He asked me ‘Am I crazy to keeping going?” Jesse Clingman, head baseball coach at Deseret Peak High School, said. “I told him you are crazy, and you should keep going because I think there’s a chance you can play.”

Clingman, before building a prep squad from scratch at newly opened Deseret Peak in Tooele, served as a team strength and conditioning coach during Ficklin’s sophomore season in Southern Nevada. The former CSN staffer is also a family friend of Ficklin’s father, Travis Ficklin, previously an associate professor and chair at Utah Tech, and now an integrated performance specialist for the Detroit Tigers.

And like his immediate family, Clingman encouraged Ficklin to chase down a professional opportunity despite missing out on another season in Provo.

Enter Evan Parker

The climate of desert-laden St. George makes it perfect for baseball.

Utah Tech, then Dixie State, afforded Bonneville High School alum Evan Parker with an offer to continue his baseball aspirations as the Ogden native later signed a minor league contract with the Milwaukee Brewers. Likewise, Southern Utah fortified Ficklin’s love for the game as he approached high school and picked up an opportunity to continue pitching in college.

Parker, completing his third season as manager of the Raptors, announced over the weekend he’d be leaving the organization and the Pioneer League entirely to become the head baseball coach at Judge Memorial Catholic High School in Salt Lake City. A core tenet of Parker’s brief managing tenure, though, is keeping his eye out for local talent, and a left-handed Ficklin caught his eye during spring training.

“He was on my radar through mutual connections,” Parker said. “Early on in the offseason, I was trying to identify some left-handed guys that I wanted, and we got a good review on him from a guy I trust who watches BYU baseball a lot.”

Ficklin was just 13 when Parker wrapped his career at Dixie, and he’d never heard of the Raptors until connecting with Ogden’s outbound manager over the options waiting for him at 8,700-seat Lindquist Field, just under five hours from Ficklin’s hometown.

“I grew up going to those (Utah Tech) games and stuff,” Ficklin said. “He just shared a connection with me, and he said he wanted me bad. Any point that you have a coach saying that I want you, it means a lot, and you’re gonna pull the trigger on that.”

Since winning a job at spring training, Ficklin’s appeared 20 times through the end of the Raptors’ latest homestand, a 2-1 series win over the Great Falls Voyagers, with Ficklin allowing three earned runs on just four total hits through an 18-17 win on Saturday and 16-10 win on Sunday.

The future’s on deck

Now 36 games into his first season in Ogden, Ficklin’s concentrated on the things he can control.

A promising May welcomed a challenging June, Ficklin said, and another homestand with the Boise Hawks is just another opportunity to grow.

Having the league’s top batter, Kyler Stancato (.514 BA), and two more top-10 PBL averages, Colson Lawrence (44 RBI, 11 home runs) and Garrett Bevacqua (12 RBI, 8 doubles), is a nice bulwark as the Raptors make their case for the postseason.

“It’s not a pitcher-friendly league,” Ficklin said. “You have ups, and you have big downs, and having those guys that have my back and tell me that I’d be back in there and doing well again was what I needed.”

These are baseball lessons, too, Ficklin said. Experience ultimately sells and bolsters the young pro’s pitching performance startup, Fick’s Pitching Performance, has 1,230 followers on Instagram and is geared toward adding 3 to 6 miles per hour to pitchers velocity in as little as six months, according to the program’s official website. The ultimate goal is to become a trusted name for developing and shaping local pitchers, Ficklin said.

The motion and velocity training Ficklin’s selling made him a natural addition to Ogden’s active roster, and, aside from his personal project, his biggest puzzle is taming a league collectively averaging upwards of 12 hits per game.

“Baseball has a way of evening itself out, and I’d been going through a couple of rough stretches, some rough outings in some important moments,” Ficklin said.

As Parker guides the Raptors through what’s now their final season together, his hopes for Ficklin are high and his pride for what another Utah baseball nut is working toward are much higher.

“He’s a very wiry athlete; he moves very well,” Parker said. “With a guy like that, you have to kind of get him in control of himself. There are a lot of moving parts when you see him. He’s pretty explosive, so it’s just a matter of getting him to be consistent.”

He continued:

“… The thing for Nolan is just to continue developing that baseball IQ,” Parker said. “It’s universal throughout the game, and so there are different sectors of it whether you’re in player development, whether you’re a pitching coordinator or a hitting coordinator or something like that, but baseball IQ is a universal thing.”

The Raptors host the Boise Hawks four nights of a six-game series June 30-July 3 at Lindquist Field.

Connect with Standard-Examiner sports reporter Conner Becker via email at cbecker@standard.net, X @ctbecker and Instagram @standardexaminersports.