OUT OF BOUNDS COLUMN: Rubber arms crave ice cream, warm weather, but practice in winter
By Nate Bloomquist
Baseball in winter? Are these guys crazy?
In fact they’re anything but. These next two months act as a pre-spring training of sorts for the Apaches baseball squad. Their development during this time period will be crucial. While the IVCC team accomplished a great deal during the fall season, it was more of a ‘feeling out’ period, where the freshmen on the team began to settle into their roles on the team. Now is the time for the team to gel. With the talent on the squad returning from last year, and a strong core of freshmen recruits, head coach Bob Koopman has every reason to believe his team can improve on last year’s 35-18 mark.
And if the team meshes well enough it will have an outside shot at a national tournament appearance Mendota’s Joe Sester and La Salle-Peru’s Jeff Weber and Matt Glupczynski are all seasoned sophomores who know what it’ll take to get to that level, and they feel the team is capable of achieving great things.
“We want to win 40 games,” said Glupczynski. “And I think all of us on this team know that we can get further in the post season. That’s definitely a goal we all have.”
But it won’t happen without hard work. As soon as the snow clears, it’ll be a common sight to see pitchers and fielders outside the campus on the former football practice field playing catch or long toss. While it may seem ridiculously cold for a silly game of catch, there’s much more going on than meets the eye. The players must prepare for what they hope will be a long season.
It all begins during spring break. While most students will be at home or on vacations of their own, the baseball team will be hard at work in Arizona, St. Louis and at the dome in Minneapolis, Minn. The Apaches will play a series of exhibition games against other community colleges and four-year universities’ JV squads.
So how does braving cold weather to play catch prepare the team for playing somewhere that hasn’t seen snow in over a century? It’s simple. The more throwing a player gets in, the stronger the teams’ arms will be. Two years ago, pitching on the squad was lackluster at best. The Apaches won five games that year and had a team ERA well over that number. Last year’s 35-win season wasn’t a fluke. Strong pitching made the difference.
Koopman cut a deal with his staff of young hurlers. If the pitching didn’t give up a walk in the course of one game, he would buy the whole pitching staff ice cream. If the IVCC coach holds up the same bargain this year, reminiscent of the players’ little league days, he could go broke.
A group of rubber arms will lead the battle-tested Apaches this season. Rubber is stronger than snow and cold, at least, that’s what Koopman’s counting on.