Larry Nobach was set to spend much of the summer at Vince Genna Stadium watching his grandson, Kyle Nobach, coach the Bend Elks this summer — just as he spent several seasons at Goss Stadium watching Kyle play baseball for Oregon State.

Since Kyle Nobach was a kid, he does not remember a time when his grandfather was not in the stands.

The elder Nobach founded Nobach Trucking and tended his property, which sits next door to Kyle’s childhood home in Marysville, Washington. It was like growing up with two families, Kyle recalled.

The “rock” of the Nobach family instilled the “Nobach mentality” in his grandson that helped him face even the most challenging obstacles on and off the diamond. And the way to do so, Kyle Nobach learned, was to put others before yourself.

Following the dog pile in the middle of the diamond at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska, in June 2018, after Kevin Abel struck out the final Arkansas batter to give Oregon State its third College World Series title, Larry, Kyle and the rest of the Nobach family celebrated a realized dream — winning a national championship.

“That was special,” said Nobach of sharing that moment with his grandfather. “I came back from the World Series, I didn’t get drafted, and I spent a lot of time with my grandparents.”

Baseball made Nobach a national champion at Oregon State, where he entered as a walk-on and became a team captain and a mainstay in the lineup on a roster loaded with MLB draft picks. It landed him an associate head coaching job in 2019 at Everett (Wash.) Community College, the team he played for prior to transferring to Oregon State.

This summer, the 25-year-old Nobach was set to start his first season as a head coach, taking over the Bend Elks, who finished 21-33 in 2019.

Of course, that has not gone as planned. Last Friday, the Elks — along with five other West Coast League teams, including the perennial WCL power Corvallis Knights — canceled their season three weeks before opening day due to the coronavirus pandemic and the social distancing guidelines it has brought with it.

“He is definitely full of energy, and we are going to miss having his energy at the stadium this year,” said Elks co-owner Kelsie Hirko of Nobach. “He is so ready for the 2021 season to be here now. He’s a wonderful addition to the team.”

These are tough times for amateur baseball players. All of the players who would have been on the Elks’ roster this summer had their spring seasons canceled. Many more will not lace up the spikes this summer.

But baseball is a reflection of life for Nobach, and it requires toughness to play — as he would quickly learn by playing for former Oregon State head coach Pat Casey. The two-time National College Coach of the Year knew how to challenge his outfielder. Sometimes being in the batter’s box during practice felt more like being in the boxing ring if a missed assignment took place.

“I want you to be great,” Nobach recalled Casey telling him after he made the mistake of suggesting that his coach wanted him to be a “good player.”

Nobach became an all-Pac-12 player in his first two seasons, yet the Beavers never advanced past the regional round and failed to make the 64-team field in 2016. The trend would not last.

In 2017, while the 56-win OSU team was on the verge of sweeping Vanderbilt and advancing to the College World Series, Nobach was walking around Goss Stadium, recovering from an injured left knee that required arthroscopic surgery and kept him off the team that year — despite being a captain. He received the news three days before the start of the season.

“The day that I found out I was having knee surgery, I was crying my eyes out to Pat,” Nobach said. “I wasn’t even on the roster. That was something that really changed me.”

From that situation, according to Nobach, stemmed a simple, yet challenging equation: event + response = outcome.

The following year, a similar story began to unfold. Weeks before his final season, he was back in the doctor’s office having his knee examined, this time the right one, where he would require the same surgery.

When the doctors told him he would be shelved six to eight weeks, Nobach insisted that he would be back in two.

After the two weeks, he went into Casey’s office and told him to put him in the lineup. Casey obliged — letting him DH — and Nobach had a career day in the batter’s box against Washington, the school from which he grew up 35 miles north in Marysville.

Three months later, Nobach was hoisting the national championship trophy, as the Beavers became the second team in College World Series history to win six elimination games to be the final team standing in Omaha.

But the equation may now be more important than ever for Nobach.

On May 3, Nobach went to visit his grandfather, but something was not right. His face was gray, he had a blank stare, and when they got him to sit down, he was shaking. It took some convincing, but the Nobach family finally talked him into taking an ambulance to a hospital.

Due to the restrictions of visitors at hospitals during the pandemic, the thought of that being the final time he would see his grandfather crossed Nobach’s mind.

An infection with cellulitis nearly entered Larry’s bloodstream. The doctors told Kyle that had he not arrived at the hospital within 12 hours, his grandfather would have died. A few days later, Nobach was in the hospital being trained on how to care for his grandpa once he returned home.

After stubbing his toe on his tractor, shortly after he was released from the hospital, Larry developed a sore on his foot. Due to being diabetic and not having feeling in his feet or hands, Larry had no idea that the sore was there.

Another trip to the doctor’s office revealed a diagnosis of gangrene, in which the body tissues die, and can lead to amputation. Losing a toe, the doctors told Nobach, or getting COVID-19, could be the beginning of the end for his grandfather.

But Larry’s condition is improving, according to his grandson. He is back at his home fighting off the cellulitis infection and the sore on his foot is starting to heal.

“He’s feeling a hell of a lot better,” Kyle Nobach said. “He’s still kicking.”

Without a season to coach, Nobach continues to help care for his grandfather, from whom he has drawn many life lessons, including how to respond to the cancellation of what was to be his first season as a head baseball coach. He works for Base By Pros — a Lynnwood, Washington-based baseball training program founded by current OSU head coach Mitch Canham — where he is an instructor to help ballplayers with hitting and mental approaches to the game.

“I thought the things I went through in baseball were tough,” Kyle said. “Then I got into life and realized that it is no different than baseball. It’s all about how you respond.

“The biggest thing (the coronavirus) brings to be me is perspective. How you view what you do will always determine what you do. This situation has provided me with so much perspective and understanding of what is important in my life — it’s the people you are around.”