Last year was a rough spring for the club baseball team. The Wildcats had only three wins in 21 games. They had few pitchers and could not persuade players to come out to practices, let alone games.
The problems were frustrating for many of the players who committed to the team.
“It was definitely due to the lack of pitching (that the team struggled),” sophomore Jason Kamin said. “Not enough pitchers came out to games last year, and we didn’t have enough depth on the pitching staff.”
Senior team captain Frank Bauch knew he had work to do coming into the fall. In a game like baseball, when a lack of players show up for games, it makes his job much more difficult.
“I never want to force someone to do something they don’t want to do,” Bauch said. “But when we had only 9 or 10 guys come out for games, a lot of players had to play positions they didn’t want to.”
But with eight of nine starters returning from last year and three newly recruited pitchers to bolster their bullpen, the Cats are poised to compete in the Great Lakes Region West Conference in the National Club Baseball Association.
NU participated in a preseason tournament in Florida over spring break where its confidence was tested. And the Cats prevailed, beating nationally-ranked Ohio University twice.
“Florida was definitely a turning point for us,” sophomore Dan Osher said. “It gave us a chance to work out the kinks before the season, and when we came back we were really confident and we were comfortable playing with each other.”
Coming off a season as disheartening as last year’s, the only direction the team could move in was forward. And thus far, the team has already improved, holding a 5-9 record with seven games remaining. A team with a losing record would seemingly be disappointed, but the Cats have played competitively with the upper-echelon teams in their conference like Wisconsin and Marquette.
They have exceeded even their own expectations.
“We’ve played better than I expected,” Bauch said. “We have contended with some of the top teams in the conference. We got a few bad breaks, but we’ve played better than our record shows. I think we’ll end our season with a record that reflects more closely how we’ve played.”
Considering where the team was four years ago – and as mediocre as this season may seem statistically – the Cats have made progress since 2005.
Bauch was the only freshman on the team and NU was not even part of an organized conference. The team has since joined a conference and can now play on a more organized and consistent basis.
The team now is focusing on getting better in that conference. Last year served as a motivator for the team to improve. With more depth in the rotation and committed returning starters this season, the Cats can look to compete with the top-tier teams in their conference, just as they did in Florida.
“We all know what club baseball is all about, and we all know what it takes to win,” Osher said. “Now that we’ve had two years playing together, we can expect more and more of ourselves.”
