As Bryson Elbrecht arrives at MCHS’ baseball field, he sees as the other players are warming up. Taking in the fresh air and the relief that the success of the baseball program has encouraged the team to compete and strive for success.

According to Prep Baseball, MCHS’ varsity baseball team is ranked fifth in the state as of the beginning of April.

“I was pretty excited when the rankings came out and the count down from the 25th ranking,” says Varsity baseball assistant coach Cody Freund. “We thought we had a shot to be ranked then as it kept going, we were wondering how high we were.”

Each day, Prep Baseball would post for four days counting down the rankings starting from 25.

“It was exciting for sure, we had an idea that we would probably be ranked somewhere,” Varsity baseball head coach Brian Rockweiler said. “We weren’t sure how high we were til it got down to the final four.”

The excitement from past seasons got the team wanting to work harder during the off season to prepare.
“The boys did a lot of work in the off season,” Freund said. “Everyone’s attending open gyms with Beerbower. So, I was really excited to see them show the work they’ve been doing.”

With last year’s record being 30-eight (12-six conference) the standards and expectations for this season are high.

“I think the expectations are pretty high,” Friend said. “We want to win the Fox Valley, we haven’t done that since 2011.”

“Besides playoffs,” junior Scotty Cole said, “we were really excited to go to the spring break tournament in Jacksonville, Illinois. All of us were able to stay in a hotel and hangout and play games during that time.”

With ten seniors, eight juniors, two sophomores and one freshman on the team this season, the coaches are working on a rebuild for when the season concludes.

“I think there’s a learning curve for the young guys for sure,” Freund said. “We lost some seniors last year, but we have a really good group of seniors who have been around for a long time. So, I think our leadership this year is really good.”

Cole said, “we’re building off of being a younger team and we lost a lot of seniors that we had last year that were really good.”

Each season is different, being that coaches are looking more focused on some positions more than others.

“This season we’re more pitcher focused,” Rockweiler said. “Especially it being so early, and hopefully, our hitters will catch up and we’ll be a complete team.”

With the season goals in mind and the work already being put into place, Rockweiler is looking forward to the team being more complete as the season goes on.

“I look forward to seeing our team come together and all play for each other for the same goal,” Rottweiler said. “Hopefully at the end of this season we will be playing in Joliet.