Troy’s Trevor Tyre rebounds after eye surgery

TROY — Stuck in a horrible hitting slump, Trevor Tyre was ready for his senior season to end in March.

Now, after the effects of LASIK eye surgery have worn off completely, he’s probably wishing he had a few more months of it.

But if Troy wants to keep its season going beyond this week’s Sun Belt Tournament at Riddle-Pace Field, the Trojans will need guys like Tyre, a senior second baseman from Marianna, to keep their hot hitting up. Tyre leads the Trojans with 11 homers and is hitting .459 with three homers, four doubles and 13 RBIs in May.

Troy plays South Alabama at 7:30 p.m. in the fourth game of the day in the double-elimination tournament. The winner gets an automatic bid to an NCAA regional.

Tyre had five hits and a home run in Troy’s season-ending series loss to the Jaguars, but that was in Mobile. It hasn’t been this easy. Less than two months ago, he took a .184 average into the series finale at New Orleans.

He had lost the job at second base to J.R. Myers, who was hitting well earlier this year, but Tyre’s two-homer, four-RBI performance got him some more starts.
He’s now hitting .319 and has struck out just nine times in 135 at-bats.

But that day in New Orleans, a game which Troy won 19-8, started Tyre’s turnaround. He had the eye surgery in December and had to put in eye drops every
day for three months to regain the strength in his eyes.

He could see, but not well enough. The day before the two-homer game at UNO was the last day he had to use the eye drops.

“I wasn’t seeing the ball,” Tyre said about his slow start. “After I could stop using the eye drops, I could see the ball as it was coming in. I could see the curve
ball, the rotation and the threads on the ball.”

That was just Tyre’s third and fourth home runs of the season. He hit two more bombs against UAB April 21, and his last eight home runs have come in less
than two months after he got his starting spot back.

“He’s stayed with it,” Troy head coach Bobby Pierce said. “He’s a fifth-year senior that understands there’s ups and downs, and he doesn’t let the downs get to
him. He’s always ready for his opportunity, and that’s the experience in him showing.”

Tyre transferred from Chipola Junior College and hit .379 as a sophomore in 2006, but struggled last year, hitting .255. He saw an eye doctor who
recommended the LASIK surgery, but Tyre still wasn’t sure.

“I had my disbeliefs,” Tyre said. “Some people say you see halos around car lights and there’s only a 50 percent chance it works. But my doctor assured me
that with my young age, it wasn’t as bad as it could be.”

He struggled through fall practice and had to wait until Dec. 8 to have surgery. Tyre said he had to wear glasses for a month before they would do the surgery,
and aside from having to put in eye drops for three months, it’s worked wonders.

Tyre’s vision went from 20/180 or 20/200 to 20/10 or possibly better, he said. Midway through this year, he felt his senior season was a waste, until he could
quit using the eye drops.

“I couldn’t pick up the rotation or spin on the ball,” Tyre said. “It was real depressing. I was hoping this year I would be able to prove to people that I could hit
when I needed to. I remember talking to my mom after one night when I went 0-for-5. She told me not to lose faith and to keep praying and if God wanted things
to turn around, they would.”

So far, they have. Two weeks ago, Tyre’s 7-for-13 performance against UL-Monroe helped him get Sun Belt Player of the Week honors. Another performance
like that at home and Troy could be celebrating a third trip to the NCAA Tournament in four years.