Welcome back everyone. It is great to be home in the Northeast getting ready for some cold conference baseball. The short sleeves are a distance memory of what we have been dealing with for the past week and a long time to come. Our field has not been ready for us to get on our field so we have been back to our old tricks of gym practices, BP, and our team lifts. Such is the life of Northeastern teams.
We opened up our Northern schedule with Dowling College in Long Island a rematch of a game from Myrtle Beach. After a bit of confusion on when we were actually heading to Dowling to play the game (Friday) we were ready to tackle the Throgs Neck Bridge (sort of) and take on Dowling. We had another very good starting pitching performance from Senior Tom Sirois but we failed to give him the run support he needed as we left a large village on base. We still had opportunities to win the game as we clawed back into the game but it was too little too late. It was frustrating for the coaching staff because we were in the game but didn’t get the effort we felt we needed to pull that ball game out, and as we all know great teams win on the road. We had to pull it together quickly and turn the page as our CACC opener was the next day versus a hungry NYACK team.
For some reason we always seem to have a tough time playing at Nyack’s field but we felt comfortable with our pitching, staff fully rested and ready to go. Dan Steers got the ball for game one and didn’t disappoint. Dan bulldogged throughout the game like he has since he stepped foot on campus for us and kept our offense in the game. It wasn’t pretty from an offensive standpoint but like the teams are doing in March Madness it is all about survival and advancing. Game Two Steve “Sgt. Shutout” Corbett took the ball and like I predicted last week I jinxed it lost his shutout streak. It’s not the Madden Jinx but as soon as that first run crossed the plate it was one of the first things that crossed my mind. The offense really came around in game two and pounded out 14 hits and multiple extra base hits. Junior James Wong delivered one of the biggest hits of the day with a triple to deep right center field and displayed our teams’ version of the Texas Rangers claw. These were two great wins to open up conference play. I felt that we started clicking as a team and hopefully this will kick start our offense and put up some more runs for our staff.
This is the fastest that our program has reached 10 wins as we now stand 10-4 and 2-0 in the CACC. This week we are tied at #6 in the East Region Poll also our highest ranking in program history. It is a tribute to how hard our guys are working but we know this isn’t our final goal. We have a challenging week a head of us with CACC member Bloomfield College on Wednesday and Friday we head to Stonehill all weather permitting since it snowed today. You have to love the Northeast. That’s it for now. Hope everyone’s brackets are looking good. If you want to follow myself and the 2011 Eagles closer please check out my twitter @CoachRix8.
Ray Ricker
