From Struggles to Success: Tyriq Kemp's Journey to Refind His Signature Spark
Despite being nearly 5,000 miles and an ocean apart from his friends and family in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Baylor senior shortstop Tyriq Kemp is starting to settle in and feel comfortable at his new home in Waco, Texas.
Whether it’s the theatrics in the batter’s box, a flashy smile after a great defensive play or a smooth celebration following an extra-base hit, there’s very little doubt that Kemp, who’s unapologetically himself at all times, loves the game of baseball.
If you ask him, “What does baseball mean to you?”
He’ll quickly respond, “Baseball means….” before briefly pausing to find the perfect word in English, his third-best language, behind Dutch and Papiamento — the native tongue of his parents, who are from Aruba and Curacao, two South American islands within the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
“Baseball means….. everything to me,” he says as he finishes the sentence confidently with a million-dollar smile.
The game has opened doors for the 5-foot-7, 155-pound middle infielder he had never initially thought possible. Before his Baylor career began, Kemp played on the Under-15, Under-18 and Under-23 Dutch National Teams; he has traveled to Austria, Italy, South Korea and Mexico to compete for gold medals at the Baseball World Cup and European Baseball Championships.
When he came to the United States to play collegiately, Kemp spent two years at Western Oklahoma State College in Altus, Oklahoma, before transferring to Baylor ahead of the 2024 season. In his second year donning the Green and Gold, Kemp has come into his own both defensively and at the plate.
Through 11 games, Kemp leads the team in doubles (6), batting average (.441), slugging percentage (.706) and on-base percentage (.545).
“Tyriq brings everything; he has energy and that swag, but he also brings a skillset unlike anyone else,” catcher JJ Kennett said. “He can lay down a bunt. He can hit for power and to all parts of the field while playing phenomenal and tremendous defense. Having a shortstop like that is a true tone-setter.”
Designated hitter Hunter Simmons added, “If you can look at your nine-hole and say that he’s batting .500 and he’s putting up the same number of stats as a guy on another team that’s batting one through three, that’s a big confidence booster. Tyriq really is a sparkplug on and off the field. Seeing him have some success gets everybody going.”
Success, however, didn’t come as easy last season. After a stellar junior college campaign, Kemp struggled mightily to transition to the Power Four’s competition level. By the end of March 2024, Kemp was hitting for an abysmal .153 batting average across 25 starts, had struck out 20 times and led the Bears with seven errors.
During that tumultuous span, Kemp felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was underperforming, and he couldn’t ignore it. The lack of results made playing with his signature spark hard to come by.
“I will dance on second base with a double, like I’ve always been that guy, but I don’t know what happened last year,” Kemp told SicEm365 in an interview. “It was a year that I had to learn from, and it was a year that I had to have to become what I am now.”
Due to the seven-hour time difference between Waco and Rotterdam, Kemp wasn’t necessarily homesick, but he couldn’t seek advice or lean on his loved ones as often as he would have liked.
Instead, he was forced to make a mid-season mindset switch on his own and would wrestle with his thoughts, asking himself, “I can have fun now and just play the game, or I can keep doing this? I’m already at the bottom.”
Ultimately, Kemp opted to embrace a more positive outlook. With his self-confidence slowly returning, he picked up his performance in the second half of the season, including a hot streak in mid-April where he went 14-for-23 at the plate with six extra-base hits. By the end of the spring, Kemp finished with a .238 batting average, marking an impressive .85 increase in a month-and-a-half span.
“I think everyone has a moment in their career that they struggle, but I’ve never struggled that big in my life,” he said. “A big part of that is because I put a lot of pressure on myself; I didn’t want to let my family down. Coming in as the shortstop at a big school, I had a little pressure on me — I can’t lie. But if I look back at it, I’m happy that I struggled because I feel like I can go through anything. Now, I’m just having fun and playing the game.”
Kemp carried that momentum into the summer when he returned home to the Netherlands and played with the Dutch National Team. He created some special memories by sharing the middle infield with his oldest brother, Dwayne, and playing with former MLB outfielder Roger Bernadina.
“Playing with the big league guys is something I’ll never forget, but that was my first time playing with the highest Dutch team,” he said. “That was a lot of pressure on me because I’m playing for our national team on the biggest stage with big leaguers, and I was like, ‘Okay. If I can do this, then I can do this in college.’ That’s how everything started rolling, and that’s how I got a big confidence boost.”
Kemp’s early-season struggles seemed far behind him now, and he had rediscovered the child-like joy of playing baseball, a sport he has loved for as long as he can remember, which isn’t shocking, considering baseball is engrained into the Kemp family’s genes.
Growing up on the island countries of Aruba and Curacao, Kemp’s father, Adonis, played baseball and was a member of the Dutch National Team in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, while his mother, Susan, played softball.
When the couple married and moved to the Netherlands for work in their early twenties, they had two sons, Dwayne and Urvin, who grew up and played baseball. Dwayne spent four years in the Chicago Cubs organization.
When Tyriq came along, the youngest of three, he spent all his youth on a baseball field, whether practicing, watching his brothers compete or studying his dad, who began coaching once his playing days were finished. He modeled his game, however, after his brothers, who played with a flair, as opposed to his dad, who’s a bit more “old school,” according to Kemp.
“In the Netherlands, there’s not a lot of baseball because the main sport is soccer,” he said. “I almost picked soccer over baseball because I knew if I did good at soccer, it would be easier to make it to the top because soccer is so big in the Netherlands, but my whole family played baseball, so that’s why I stuck to baseball.”
Family is a significant priority to Kemp and continually pushes him to be at his best. He even has “doing this for the fam” written on his glove.
“They took good care of me, and I want to give them something back,” Kemp said. “That’s what really, really motivates me.”
Traditionally, the cultural norm in the Netherlands isn’t to play baseball in college. The most likely scenario is to either sign as an international free agent to eventually try and make the big leagues or stay home and play in the Dutch Major Leagues.
When it came time for Kemp to choose his path, the MLB had recently cut the number of draft selections in half, indirectly impacting international free agency and strengthening the desire to play collegiately.
As of 2019, the MLB Draft was 40 rounds and featured over 1,200 selections. Starting in 2021, the MLB Draft narrowed the process to 20 rounds, and 612 high school and college players were selected.
“It used to be pretty easy, and you had more room, but now, it’s pretty tight, so everyone wants to go to college first,” Kemp said. “I think it’s really hard to get a free agent [deal]. You will be more in the picture if you play college ball — you get seen more.”
Kemp’s good friend, Junior Martina, a middle infielder from Curacao who grew up in the Netherlands, had spent two years playing at Western Oklahoma State College and was selected by the Washington Nationals in the 16th round of the 2019 MLB Draft.
When the Pioneers needed a new starting shortstop before the 2022 season, Martina told head coach Kurt Russel about Kemp. Within three months, Kemp arrived in Altus, Oklahoma, a mere 4,900-mile distance from Rotterdam.
“It was new for me because I never thought about going to college,” Kemp said. “Most international people just want to be a free agent and get signed. When he connected me to the head coach, I had to send some videos, and just like that, I was in the U.S.”
At Western Oklahoma State College, a third of the roster was Americans, another third was Dominicans and another third were players from South or Central America. Kemp, who shared island roots with several players from Aruba and Curacao, never felt out of place.
“It was completely different, but the one thing that was fun was because the whole team was Spanish,” he said. “It was a culture shock, but I’m happy I went JUCO and got to go to the grind first.”
During the fall of his sophomore year, Kemp’s head coach, Russel, approached him to tell him that Baylor was coming to watch him play.
“And I was like, whatever, I don’t know what Baylor is. I don’t know who Baylor is. I thought Baylor was a person at first,” Kemp said. “I thought it was a scout for a pro team — I’m not going to lie. And I was like, I’m just gonna do my thing. … Back then, I only knew the big schools around me like OU and OSU, maybe Tennessee or LSU.”
As the game went on, Kemp went to some of his teammates and asked them, “Who is Baylor?”
One teammate quipped back, “Who is Baylor? Baylor is a school.”
Suddenly intrigued by this, Kemp asked, “What kind of school?”
His teammate responded, “It’s a Big 12 school. It’s a really good school.”
Kemp didn’t let the extra attention or added pressure phase him, and he mashed two home runs with Baylor assistant coach Zach Dillon in attendance. Kemp had done enough that he became an immediate recruiting priority for Dillon, who approached him after the game and got him to take an official visit to Waco a few weeks later.
Dillon noted, “He hit the ball out of the yard to left-center. He hit the ball out of the yard to right-center. He drag-bunted for a hit and took one of the best in and outs I’ve ever seen a left-side defender take, and I came back and said, ‘We gotta take this guy.’”
Although he struggled in his first season wearing the Green and Gold, Kemp’s infectious personality makes him a clubhouse favorite, and many teammates call him a “sparkplug.”
“That makes me so happy because I felt like I didn’t help them a lot last year,” Kemp said. “I know my teammates know that I’m a good player because they tell me, but last year, they would tell me that, but I wouldn’t show it. I wanted to show my teammates, but it wasn’t really going. Now, I can finally show what they expected from me.”
Kemp believes that the struggles last season were pivotal in how he turned it around this spring, and now, he’s playing free and loose.
“If you play to win, have fun and have God on your mind, it’s going to help you play better instead of worrying about things. I’m not playing like I have to do this now. If you’re trying to win a ballgame, stay positive and trust God, the joy comes, and you start playing good.”
Now that he’s regained his signature spark, if you ask Kemp, “Do you prefer flaunting a home run or making a flashy defensive play?”
He’ll ponder the question briefly and say, “That’s a tough one, but a home run. I say that because if I make a good play, I feel like people already expect that from me. When I hit a home run and pimp it, it’s like, ‘Ooooh. I haven’t seen him do that much.’”
Kemp and the Bears (8-3) will look to continue their hot start to the season at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 4, against Tarleton (4-8) at Baylor Ballpark. The game will be streamed on ESPN+.