Emily Leighton | Staff Writer
This past weekend, Apr. 10-11, the Buena Vista University (BVU) baseball team took on the Central Dutch in a four game series. The Beavers are off to a good start, and even with the few loses they’ve been handed, they are using every one as a lesson and moving forward with the season.
The team went 1-3 in their games against Central, but they’re using what they’ve learned from their losses in order to be ready for their upcoming games.
Coach Steve Eddie believes strongly in his team, and he knows they are capable of great things.
“Our team is a work in progress. We have three weeks left in our regular season and need to work on being a more well-rounded team. We have to figure out more ways to score runs and how to give up fewer runs. It’s a pretty simple concept, but there are a lot of areas we need to improve upon,” Eddie said.
Freshman Noah Paper is off to a great start by successfully adjusting to the change from high school to college to help his team be successful.
“Being a freshman, it is a little difficult getting used to the transition, but the upperclassmen help out a lot by showing you what to do if you don’t know,” Paper said.
Senior Eric Gurbacki is ready for another game and ready to prove that this team is not one to sleep on.
“None of us had a good taste in our mouth after this weekend, and we want to go out and prove to people that this team can live up to our potential. We know that we are better than what we showed this past weekend,” Gurbacki said.
The Beavers are taking this past weekend to reflect on, and now they have a better insight of what they need to improve on and the necessary steps to be taken.
“It was a very disappointing weekend in Pella. Jake Bjorkgren threw a great game in our only win. He was very aggressive and pounded the strike zone. Jake has become our most consistent starting pitcher. I think we also learned that we need to keep working on becoming a better team. We played much more aggressively from an offensive standpoint on Saturday, which we will need to continue to do,” Eddie said.
Going into practice now, the men know they need to focus a little more and step up if they want to continue having a successful season.
“We are going to go to practice with a new added focus. We put ourselves in this situation, but there’s no reason we can’t come out of it. Our goals are still there for us if we stick together and work hard,” Gurbacki said.
“We know what we have to work on this week in practice, and that’s what we are going to do. We obviously can’t take games for granted so we have to come into these games with the intensity as if it was the conference tournament,” Paper said.
The Beavers are currently 17-8 overall and 7-7 in conference play. The team is scheduled to take on the Simpson Storm in a four game mini-series starting Friday, Apr. 17th in Storm Lake starting at 3:30 p.m.
Graphic by Justice Gage
