The fall baseball season is underway with 31 players including four who return from last spring’s 5 – 39 team.
Taking part in this for-practice-only fall play are 19 freshmen, 8 transfers, and veterans Charlie Riva, Jesse Arjes, Josh Reeder and Eric Markey. A new assistant coach, John Drahos, who is helping with outfielders and hitting, joins head coach Bob Koopmann and assistant Bill Coutts.
Koopman could not comment on how the fall season is going. "It’s only been a week (at press time), so it is hard to tell at this point," he said.
The Apaches dropped two exhibition games Sept. 5 to Black Hawk (3-1, 14-4), and will be traveling most of the remainder of the exhibition season. They will be playing at Ottawa’s Masinelli Field on Sept. 26 at 1 p.m.
Koopman said the fall season will end with an intrasquad Purple vs. White World Series. The two assistant coaches will split the team by a draft and play a best of five series.
The coach explained that fall baseball will enable to team to focus on skill work in the spring.
"(In the fall) we are able to put in all of our systems – defense and so forth – and then when we get to the spring, we can concentrate on skill work," Koopman said. "They we just have to review our systems."
The men have been practicing daily on IVCC’s field, but the field is scheduled to undergo renovation sometime in the fall. Practice will then be moved to either Oglesby or Peru Washington.
Koopman said improving the playing field was one of his goals for this fall. Over the past several seasons the field has often been unplayable in the spring.
For the spring the team is planning its first southern trip. Over spring break they are tentatively scheduling a trip to Pensacola, Fla. to play nine games. They are also hoping to travel to St. Paul, Minn. to play a doubleheader in the Metro Dome. Koopman said the players are planning some fund-raising for the trips.
How does the spring season look?
"As Northwestern took the purple to Pasadena, we are taking the purple to Batavia, N.Y. (Junior College World Series)," the coach said.
Sept. 17, 1998 the Apache