Valparaiso University pitcher Connor Lockwood was forced to confront the most feared words in baseball after the sixth start of his sophomore season in 2023.
“Tommy John surgery.”
At the time, Connor Lockwood’s elbow injury felt like a sucker punch. The idea of being sidelined for an entire year seemed unimaginable to him.
“It was a long recovery process,” he said. “It’s like 12 months to come back, and you’re in a brace for the first eight weeks after surgery. You can’t move your arm. You have to sleep with the brace. It was definitely tough.
“It was a lot of making sure I was doing my recovery day in and day out because I knew how important the little things were, even though it all was super repetitive. I just kept telling myself every day that I had to do it to get back to where I wanted to be and get back to playing baseball.”
But Connor Lockwood, a 2021 Libertyville graduate, was rewarded for his perseverance. The 6-foot-1 right-hander returned to the mound just 11 months after suffering the injury and made 12 starts for the Beacons in 2024. A year later, he led the Missouri Valley Conference with 80 strikeouts and 95 2/3 innings while recording a 6.59 ERA over 14 starts.
The injury also opened the door to a unique opportunity. During Connor Lockwood’s recovery, he was awarded a medical redshirt, and his younger brother Cole, who was making a name for himself at Libertyville, decided to commit to VU.
Now Cole Lockwood, a 5-9 infielder who batted .418 with three home runs, 52 runs scored and 38 steals in 41 attempts for Class 4A state champion Libertyville last season, is a freshman infielder for VU, where Connor is a redshirt senior. They’re teammates for the first time.
“It definitely helped swing my decision,” Cole Lockwood said. “But I love everything about Valpo. So, yeah, it was definitely a factor in the back of my mind, and honestly, yeah, it sucked when he had to get TJ, but at the same time that’s the reason he’s here right now too.
“It’s awesome going into the facility every single day and knowing that I get to be with him and spend time with him during his last season.”
It also means a lot to their parents, Rob and Tricia Lockwood, who had watched Cole and younger brother Chase, an Illinois State commit, play together at Libertyville for the past two seasons.
“First and foremost, you’re extremely proud because you know how hard each of them has worked to get there,” Rob Lockwood said. “But I think what makes it extra special is, you know, Cole got to play with Chase, and he talked about how special that was, and I think there was a piece of Connor that was really hoping he would get that same opportunity.
“So when you look at the boys and see how much they cheer for each other, really pull for each other and just how close they are, it’s super special as a parent.”
Connor and Cole Lockwood have always been close — and extremely competitive — according to their parents. Whether they were in the driveway, on the field or in the backyard, where they engaged in their favorite childhood pastime, offense-defense, a game that often involved fisticuffs and tears, the brothers were constantly trying to one-up each other.
“One person is the wide receiver, the other is the cornerback, and you’re going against each other,” Connor Lockwood said of offense-defense. “That got really intense. I remember there were a lot of punches thrown and a lot of just straight-up fighting between the two of us, and our dad would have to step in and calm us down because we would get so competitive.”
As Cole Lockwood recalled, that wasn’t the worst of it.
“I would actually say driveway basketball got the most heated,” he said. “We would just go all out, and there have definitely been a couple fights after that.”
These days, Connor and Cole Lockwood apply their competitiveness to a common goal, which is winning baseball games for VU.
The Beacons haven’t finished a season with a winning record since 2016, and their most recent NCAA Tournament appearance came in 2013. Coach Brian Schmack, a former pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, is the man in charge of steering the program back to prominence. He believes the Lockwoods have a part to play in that effort, and while he enjoys the subplot of the brothers’ reunion, that isn’t why he recruited them.
“Connor, obviously, the ability to throw strikes is what you really looked at from the start, and that’s a valuable trait, and it’s played out really well, obviously, for us in that capacity and for him,” Schmack said.
“With Cole, he’s a baseball player, and we just want baseball players, right? Obviously, he’s not 6-foot-4, 220 pounds, so he’s not one of those guys that is going to play those types of positions. But he’s a baseball player, and that’s who you recruit. You recruit guys that play hard, that understand the game, are a little bit gritty and can play multiple positions, and that’s exactly what we’ve gotten from him so far.”
Schmack continued to praise Cole Lockwood, who has somewhat unexpectedly started every VU game as a freshman.
“Right away, he came in and he was confident, which is good,” Schmack said. “He should be, and he said it best. I think his hitting is what’s translated right away.
“Right away he came in and he had a really good fall. Toward the end of it, he broke his finger, so he got sidelined for the winter, which I think hurt a little bit and delayed his development. But he’s picked up where he left off.”
Indeed, Cole Lockwood doubled in his first at-bat, and he hasn’t stopped hitting since, posting a .277 batting average in his first 13 games. His 13 hits rank third on the team, and he has a team-leading three steals.
Connor Lockwood has had a strong start to the season too. He has a 3.96 ERA, a 1.08 WHIP and 17 strikeouts across four starts. In his final season with the program, he wants to win, of course, but he mostly wants to savor what may be the last ride of a baseball journey that began when he first picked up a bat as an 18-month-old.
“It’s been my dream since I was a little kid to play professional baseball and get drafted,” Connor Lockwood said. “But right now, I’m just focused on enjoying the moment, enjoying my last year, and whatever happens, happens.
“I’m not trying to put too much pressure on myself every start to think, ‘Oh, I have to go out and do this, this and this so I can get my name out there and get drafted.’ It’s just going out there and having fun with my best friends and playing the game that I love, and whatever is going to happen will happen, and I have to trust in that.”
Noah Poser is a freelance reporter.
