Margaret BauerAfter suffering many early setbacks due to player injuries, the Bears baseball team remains hopeful that it will finish this season on a high note.
“We expected this to be a decent season,” said head coach Ric Lessmann. “We were 23-16 last year and 30-10 the year before. The problem [this season] was that we lost a few players early in the season.”
In the first week and a half the Bears lost their No. 1 and No. 2 pitchers to injuries. Next, their first baseman got hurt, followed by their second baseman. Following those losses, their back-up short stop pulled his hamstring in the team’s first game back in St. Louis. Continuing this downward trend, the team lost its No. 3 pitcher, which set the whole rotation back.
With so many players falling out because of injuries, the team faced a difficult challenge with the absence of all of these players. Now, three quarters of the way through their season, the team is starting to regain its footing.
“We’re starting to get back to where I thought we would be,” said Lessmann.
However, the slew of injuries has not entirely deflated the team’s overall dynamic. Players emerged to fill in the gaps and otherwise unnoticed talents surfaced.
“We’ve had some nice surprises,” said Lessmann. “Andy Shields, a freshman, is our No. 4 pitcher. He plays regularly and he’s really going to be a nice player for us. Ryan Corning is really a Division I hitter. He’s our lead-off hitter. We’re at 14-13 right now only because we’ve been able to get along with some back-up players and some people have emerged who we didn’t really know were there.
Lessmann also credits his pitchers for the team’s overall success so far.
“We’ve got some good pitching out of our top four. We’ve been able to patch it together to keep ourselves above 500 and let’s just hope we can finish the way we thought we were going to start.”
The team will face off against DePauw University on their home field at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday. The players expect a challenging game.
“It’s going to be a pretty tough game,” said sophomore Sam Nixon. “But we’ve got a group of guys who are going to fight as hard as we can and we’re not going to give up anything easily.”
Coach Lessmann commented on the level of competition that the Bears expect to see.
“Everybody we play has good baseball players,” said Lessmann. “Anybody we play can beat us. On the other hand, everybody has to look at us too because we’re good enough to beat anybody.”
Lessmann has high standards for his own players and expects the players to prepare themselves to play just like a professional would.
“Team concept is simple in baseball-all nine players have to be playing well. If you have seven playing well and two that aren’t the other team will find those two players. I want [the players] to take on that professional mentality-they need to be ready to play every game.”
The team is prepared to bring their A-game to Sunday’s match-up. They are aware, however, that in baseball, a little luck is involved.
“Sometimes you play your A-game and things don’t go well,” said Lessmann. “Baseball is hard to predict.”
Team spirit remains high and the players are confident in their ability to finish strongly.
“We’re definitely competitive,” said Lessmann. “We look at ourselves as a top-30 kind of team. Nobody can play us lightly and we can beat anybody, but we have to stay healthy and this year we didn’t stay healthy.”