LSU Tigers championship pitcher Javen Coleman missed more than 13 months after elbow surgery

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (KTRK) -- Javen Coleman committed to play his college baseball for LSU when he was just 16 years old. With his college plans set at an early age, the left-handed pitcher knew he would have to be patient on his journey. He just didn't know how patient.

"I was out for 13 and a half months," Coleman, who grew up in Richmond, explained to ABC13 during a Zoom interview.

You see, Coleman needed reconstructive elbow surgery after injuring his arm in February 2022, in the midst of his sophomore season in Baton Rouge.

"The process of getting the surgery and doing all the rehab is super tedious," Coleman noted. "But it also taught me I had a lot to be grateful for. Anything can happen to anybody, and I came back healthy."

Not only did Coleman, the only Houston-area product on LSU's 2023 baseball roster, return from elbow surgery in a little more than 14 months, he's now a newly-minted national champion. Coleman was one of LSU's starting pitchers in the 2023 NCAA Men's College World Series, an event the Tigers program won for the seventh time in its history.

"It's awesome," he admitted. "It's crazy to think about how much of a change I went from just a year ago. I was in a sling, and now, I'm in a dog pile winning a national championship, and I'm contributing to it. I was missing the game so much. I wanted to be back for my team."

Coleman was homeschooled prior to LSU.

"I don't know if I've ever met somebody at the level that we're playing was homeschooled," he pointed out. "I thought it was cool. I could do whatever I wanted as long as I got my school work done and my mom didn't get on me about it. So it freed up a lot of my time, and I was able to grind and work on my pitching."

Coleman, who will be a junior for LSU next season, says he plans to spend the summer in Baton Rouge continuing to rehab his surgically-repaired left arm. He and the Tigers will play in his hometown next season, as LSU is slated to be part of the six-team field in the Astros Foundation College Classic.

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