WATCH: How Texas catcher Michael McCann got back on the field

Freshman year of college can be a difficult transition for anyone, but for Texas Longhorns catcher Michael McCann, the change was more than he’d bargained for.

McCann appeared in five games during the 2015 season, then featured in exactly zero of the team’s final 25 contests and found himself out of a scholarship. But he continued on at UT as a regular student, and eventually worked his way back onto the team under a new coaching staff.

His journey back is chronicled in this Longhorn Network feature:

“I thought I was out of the game, there was no way I’d step on a baseball field again,” McCann said. “Somehow the hard work and dedication led me back to it and it’s working out for me.”

McCann admits he’d been a big name coming out of high school and had difficulty adjusting to the college game.

“I felt like I was working hard, but I wasn’t getting the results I wanted to,” he said.

At the end of the 2015 season, McCann was told there wasn’t enough money available to renew his scholarship. He was unsure of what to do next and ultimately decided to leave baseball and become a regular student.

For a few months anyway.

That fall, assistant head coach Tommy Nicholson approached him about working some camps. McCann all but jumped at the opportunity. Then David Pierce, who’d tried to recruit McCann to his previous team at Sam Houston State, was hired as new ‘Horns head coach in summer 2016.

With a new coach leading the program, McCann again found himself on the Texas baseball roster. And as the season approached, he pushed himself harder than ever to make things work out the second time around.

So far, so good.

“He’s been so committed to not only being as good as he can be, but he’s been so committed to the University of Texas, and Texas baseball,” Pierce said.