The only members of the Georgetown campus more worried about the number of snow days piling up this semester than Assistant Provost John Q. Pierce would be the baseball team, which has only seen one full practice on a baseball field the entire spring because of the inclement weather.
The team just recently returned from a trip down to Port Charlotte, Fla. for the Snowbird Classic, which produced evenly split results against non-conference opponents that included the likes of Western Michigan, South Dakota St., Saint Joseph’s, and Iowa. Taking this season’s unique circumstances into consideration, the Hoyas have been middling right about where Head Coach Pete Wilk believes they ought to be.
“Between weather issues … lack of practice on a baseball field and our injury issues, I thinkwe’re holding up pretty good,” said Wilk. “We’re having a difficult year getting into any kind of rhythm from a practice standpoint with Mother Nature, and we got some guys who are banged up right now, and we’re doing about as well as we should be.”
Offensive production from senior first baseman Steve Anderson and sophomore catcher Nick Collins have been essential to the team’s recent performance. They lead the team with batting averages of .348 and .328 respectively.
“We expected them to carry our offense. They’re two very talented kids …They’re carrying the load offensively and that’s … what we thought we were going to build around,” said Wilk in regards to his two batting leaders.
Anderson has been keeping his approach simple thus far and it has paid off. With a team-leading .439 slugging percentage and 12 RBI, he is not letting any of the challenges facing the Blue and Gray get in the way of a successful senior season.
“Not thinking too much is really the key,” said Anderson.
The Hoyas have been getting solid innings and earned run averages out of freshman right-hander David Ellingson and junior lefty Matt Hollenbeck, with respective ERAs of 1.17 and 1.08. Georgetown has had some trouble with keeping their runs against low enough to give the offense a chance to build a lead. “We’re throwing the ball up in the zone and … that doesn’t translate into a lot of success, especially against better teams. We’ve got some kids that have good enough stuff to win if they are down, but if they’re up, our outfielders are going to be doing a lot of running,” said Wilk.
As the snow melts and their home field Shirley Povich battles mud and flooding, the Hoyas must look toward finding some kind of consistency in their level of play if they want to compete when league comes around.
“We finally get into a rhythm down there [in Florida] and then we get yanked back and we’re dealing with six inches of snow here. It’s unbelievable,” said Wilk. “It’s extremely frustrating trying to be a college baseball player and a college baseball coach in this area this year.”
The players are taking their adversity in stride, putting in their hours in the cage and on the Harbin Multi-Sport Field. The Blue and Gray will host Towson this Friday at 3 p.m. depending on field conditions.
