For those that don’t remember, the 2009 Warhawk baseball team missed making it to the NCAA Division III “World Series” by a smidgen last season. The ’09 Hawks lost to Carthage College in the championship game of the Moline (Ill) Regional. The Hawks finished last year with a solid 30 and 19 record.
There have been plenty of changes made to this year’s starting line-up. Only Ben Kuhlmann, Rob Coe, Nick Rechlitz, Matt Beyer and Travis Wessels were in the starting line-up in last season’s Regional final.
Jordan Stine missed all of last year due to injury. Jeff Donovan also missed all of 2009. Mike Kenseth missed much of the final third of the season due to injury.
Stine and Donovan are back this year. Kenseth is penciled in at shortstop each game. Also on this year’s squad is Danny Putnam who started his college career at NCAA Division 1 Central Arkansas State.
The ’09 team finished its season with a .280 batting average. This year’s batting average is a more robust .360.
“Donovan, Stine and Putnam (see adjacent photo courtesy of UWW Athletics) are obviously good quality offensive ‘sticks’ that we didn’t have a year ago,” Coach Vodenlich tell’s Voices Eye on Baseball.
Prior to this season Vodenlich was asked about his top recruits for 2010.
“I would be asked who do you have for recruits coming in?” Vodenlich explains. “Well we have Jeff Donovan and Jordan Stine so we’re sitting pretty good there. “Putnam is also a very good addition and Kenseth is playing better than he ever has. Those additions have had a great impact on our team both offensively and defensively.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that nothing is a given in baseball. The Warhawks enter the postseason with one of the top records in the country. The postseason is a different “animal.” Don’t get looking ahead. Play one game at a time. Yes its cliché time but it is the way a team MUST approach the postseason.
“At the end of the year it really doesn’t matter what other people think, its what you believe, Vodenlich tells the Royal Purple. “We’ve always believed that we were the best team in the conference and that we were going to win the WIAC postseason title. Now we have to go out and do it on the field.
UW-Whitewater will open play in this weekend’s three-team conference tournament by playing the game-one winner between UW-Stevens Point and UW-Platteville. Action begins at 10 a.m. Friday morning at Prucha Field at James B. Miller Stadium in Whitewater. The Hawks and the winner of game-one are scheduled to play at approximately 1 p.m.
A reminder, all the games in Whitewater’s postseason run will be broadcast live with Gary Douglas and Tom “Voice” Pattison on KOOL 106.5. The games will also be “streamed” by clicking onto UW-Whitewater’s athletic Website.
Cut and paste the following Website address:
http://vod.uww.edu/uwwsports2/
No comments:
Post a Comment