Yesterday we won the championship in the first MIAA Baseball Tournament, earning a automatic berth into the NCAA DIII Regionals next week. In past seasons we earned the privilege to compete in the regionals by winning our regular season championship. Though we did win the regular season title again, we had to prove it all over again on the field this week by winning the four-team, double elimination conference tournament. We completed the job without a loss, thanks to some fantastic execution by our hitters, defensive players, and pitchers.
Congratulations to our eight seniors, who were MIAA Champions all four years here at Adrian College!! They are the first group to do so since some Alma College players did it back in the 1950s!!
Our players know that the season does not end here; we've still got some work to do! We advanced to the DIII College World Series in 2008, but that was a year before these seniors put on their AC uniforms. We now must go win a Regional Tournament, most likely in Marietta, Ohio, to advance to the CWS again.
Obviously, the regional tournament will have other championship teams trying to achieve the same goal that our team has. One of those teams is Marietta College, the defending national champions who just won their conference tournament today. In 2011 we played them in a doubleheader in Florida and split the two games with them, losing 3-1 and winning 2-0.
What do we have to do to continue our success in the post-season? The answer is that we need to keep executing in the batters box, on the mound, and with our gloves. Our plan as a pitching staff has been the same all season: throw first pitch strikes, get leadoff batters out, throw to the bottom of the strike zone, and successfully manage damage control. The pitchers know that this team's offense is going to put some runs on the scoreboard, and that always takes some pressure off of the defense and pitching.
Our team is among the DIII national leaders in some statistical categories as we prepare for the regionals. Among those categories are slugging percentage, batting average, runs per game, triples, earned run average, walks allowed per game, and strikeout to walk ratio. With some of those categories, the keys to success have so much to do with taking care of the little things and focusing on the task at hand. Once we take care of the task at hand, we can focus on the next one. One pitch at a time, on batter at a time, one inning at a time, and one game at a time.
We call that Business as Usual.
Before I finish this, I want to give a proud shout out to my Alma Mater and former team, the Saints of Siena Heights University, who won the WHAC Tournament and advanced to the semi-finals in the opening round of the NAIA National Tournament. Congrats to Coach John Kolasinski, his staff and all the players. In addition, continued good luck to our former AC coaches Luke Harrigan and Xander Younce, who are currently in their third game of the WVIAC Tournament.
Congratulations to our eight seniors, who were MIAA Champions all four years here at Adrian College!! They are the first group to do so since some Alma College players did it back in the 1950s!!
Our players know that the season does not end here; we've still got some work to do! We advanced to the DIII College World Series in 2008, but that was a year before these seniors put on their AC uniforms. We now must go win a Regional Tournament, most likely in Marietta, Ohio, to advance to the CWS again.
Obviously, the regional tournament will have other championship teams trying to achieve the same goal that our team has. One of those teams is Marietta College, the defending national champions who just won their conference tournament today. In 2011 we played them in a doubleheader in Florida and split the two games with them, losing 3-1 and winning 2-0.
What do we have to do to continue our success in the post-season? The answer is that we need to keep executing in the batters box, on the mound, and with our gloves. Our plan as a pitching staff has been the same all season: throw first pitch strikes, get leadoff batters out, throw to the bottom of the strike zone, and successfully manage damage control. The pitchers know that this team's offense is going to put some runs on the scoreboard, and that always takes some pressure off of the defense and pitching.
Our team is among the DIII national leaders in some statistical categories as we prepare for the regionals. Among those categories are slugging percentage, batting average, runs per game, triples, earned run average, walks allowed per game, and strikeout to walk ratio. With some of those categories, the keys to success have so much to do with taking care of the little things and focusing on the task at hand. Once we take care of the task at hand, we can focus on the next one. One pitch at a time, on batter at a time, one inning at a time, and one game at a time.
We call that Business as Usual.
Before I finish this, I want to give a proud shout out to my Alma Mater and former team, the Saints of Siena Heights University, who won the WHAC Tournament and advanced to the semi-finals in the opening round of the NAIA National Tournament. Congrats to Coach John Kolasinski, his staff and all the players. In addition, continued good luck to our former AC coaches Luke Harrigan and Xander Younce, who are currently in their third game of the WVIAC Tournament.
Great job, Gordie!
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