Club Baseball ready to start spring season
Joe O'Connell
Issue date: 4/3/07 Section: Sports
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All of this can only mean one thing, baseball season is getting underway.
Except at UNH.
The UNH Baseball Club was supposed to start their spring season on March 31 against St. Joseph's College. But due to the team's home field at St. Thomas Aquinas High School being flooded, the baseball team has been forced to postpone their home opener until April 2l against SUNY Albany.
That's right, you read correctly; the team's home field is at a high school in Dover. Not on campus, but at a high school 15 minutes away.
But this kind of inconvenience is nothing new for the club, which has been receiving the short end of the stick for the past seven years of its existence after it was cut by the athletic program in 1997 due to Title IX restrictions.
"Lack of practicing is obviously a big problem," said Coach Peter Michel, who has been the head coach of the team since its founding in 2000.
The club only practices two days a week, three if they are lucky, which is definitely not enough time to hone all of a baseball player's skills. And team tri-captain Steve Wheeler couldn't agree more.
"We only hit three times a week," he said. "In order to get better, we need to hit everyday."
Unfortunately, being unable to practice and hit everyday is simply a wish when you don't have a field to call your own and you are sharing a basketball court with the softball team or a turf field with the soccer team.
"It's difficult when you don't a have a home field," said Coach Michel. "We are guest where ever we play, even when we are the home team."
To make matters worse, the inability to actually play baseball is just part of the club's problems. Because as Coach Michel puts it, you have to evaluate the team from two different angles. First from the baseball side and then from the club side. And when evaluating a club, one word separates a successful club from a failing one, fundraising.
Clubs receive little to no financial support from the university, so if they want to be successful, they have to raise the necessary funds themselves and the baseball club is no exception. Hosting baseball clinics, annual golf scrambles, and team dinners are just some of the ways the team is raising the money they need to not only succeed as a club, but also show the university they have the support of the community. Community support would in turn mean more money from the university.
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