Baseball team closes out successful fall season
By Billy Cruz
Assistant Sports Editor
The baseball team recently closed out their Fall 2001 season with an inter-squad World Series, where the freshmen and sophomores squared off in a best-of-seven series.
For the second consecutive year, it was the sophomores coming away with the series win, defeating the freshmen four games to one in the possible seven-game series.
The team, under the direction of fifth year head coach Bob Koopmann who has compiled 115 wins thus far to his record, have been practicing and playing a light schedule for the past three months in preparation for the upcoming 2002 Spring season.
The squad, along with team captains Billy Corrigan, Kent Graff, Nathan Miller, Jake Resser, and Billy Terry will be looking to improve on last year’s school-breaking 45 wins and sectional and region championships, before the team fell in the state championship to Parkland College.
Koopmann said the fall season is a measuring stick for himself and his coaching staff to take a look at their team and see what changes can be made before the start of the new season in February.
"The coaching staff was very pleased with the way the team performed in the fall," said Koopmann. "We have depth at every position so we were able to mix up the lineup cards quite a bit and that allowed us to see the way we can play in different situations."
The IVCC mentor went on to say how critical the next eight weeks will be for the team and the coaches.
"Throughout November and December the team will be conditioning extensively and that will allow myself and the other coaches to see where we stand as a team," said Koopmann.