Baseball Team Ready for Opener

The Bears baseball team will start their season at 3 p.m. today at UCA Field against Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, but the team has been hard at work for months preparing for the challenging conference schedule.

Coach Doug Clark said that the Southland Conference is a very tough conference. “Recently, Texas State has been really good and so has Sam Houston State,” Clark said. “UTSA is always tough, especially at their field, but fortunately we are playing them here this year.”

Clark said he felt the team has played well and hung in during some tough losses last season but thinks things will be different this year. “I feel with our pitching and our mental toughness we are going to compete this year,” he said.

For the Bears, pitching is going to be a key aspect to the team’s game plan, Clark said. “Our first year of Division 1 play, we maybe had three arms. Now, we have a whole arsenal,” Clark said. “We just have a lot more options now, especially a lot of left-handed pitchers.”

For this season, Clark said that there are five different players that are competing for the top pitching spots in the rotation: Sophomore Logan Ariola, senior Bobby Pritchett, junior Chase Huchingson, senior Michael Wild and junior Reece Cross.

“We will be as good as our bull pen,” Clark said. “Just like any other college team, or any team for that matter, we will be just as good as our bull pen.”

Along with focusing on developing a better offense and pitching, Clark said that he has been building up the team’s toughness as well. “Since the fall, we have started doing more early morning exercises, and we have started doing more conditioning, weight lifting and toughness training.”

Clark said that the team has had to make a lot of sacrifices this year. “To be honest I thought someone would have quit by now, but no one has,” he said. One of the reasons for building up the team’s overall toughness is because of last season’s 11 one-run losses, Clark said. “In baseball, there are reasons why you lose those closer games which is why we have tried to become a tougher team.”

The Bear's full schedule can be found here. The player roster is here.

2010 UCA Baseball Team

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