Baseball, Track & Field wrap up spring seasons after graduation day

Photo description: Pole vaulter Josie Puelz placed second in the NAIA
Outdoor Track & Field Championship in May.

Photo credit: Jake Knabel 

Madeline Peters

Sports Editor

Concordia baseball and track and field finished up their seasons following commencement on May 6. Here is what happened while students were gone for the summer.

Baseball

The Great Plains Athletic Conference baseball championship tournament took place on May 4-9. The Bulldogs won all pod games, beating the University of Northwestern 7-4, Midland University 9-4 and Morningside University 16-3. The championship game saw CUNE lose to Doane University 1-0 on a sacrifice grounder in the 4th inning, allowing Logan Amick to score.

However, the season continued when it was announced that the Bulldogs would advance to the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics tournament as a No. 3 seed. To advance to the World Series, the team had to survive the opening round of five games played in Lawrenceville, Georgia from May 15-18.

The Bulldogs used their one available loss against Freed-Hardeman University, a 7-4 defeat. They rallied to beat Saint Xavier University 10-3 and Midway University 11-7 but could not survive a rematch against Freed-Hardeman and lost 11-8, knocking them out of the tournament and ending their season.

Pitcher Christian Gutierrez, a sophomore, said that although the team stopped short of the World Series, they still did well.

“This past season ended pretty rough, y’know?” Gutierrez said. “[We] didn’t really go as far as we wanted to, but I feel like we still made steps in a really good direction as far as continuous improvement, and I feel like this year we’ll be stronger.”

Fellow sophomore Jaidan Quinn shared a similar sentiment. “We didn’t hit the mark that we wanted to, but we got really close, and I feel like this year we have a good chance of getting to that mark we want,” Quinn said. “This past baseball season, it [still] went very well for us as a whole team.”

Quinn had a great season with teammate Joey Grabanski as they competed to hit the most home runs.

“It’s kinda unreal. At the beginning of this year, we kinda came up with each other and were like, ‘Hey, we both can do it, so let’s do it together,’” Grabamski said. “We kinda underestimated ourselves saying, ‘Let’s get 25 together, make it an even 50.’”

Both players ended up with 27 home runs, tying for the season home run record.

Senior Ben Berg said the season was exciting even if they didn’t go farther in the tournament.

“Oh, it was a ton of fun; it was an absolute blast. For me individually it was a great year,” said Berg. “It was a really good culmination of all the hard work that I had put in the four years prior. As a team, it would’ve been great to go a little bit further and win a couple more ball games at the end of the year, but we still did have a really good run.”

Track and Field

The Concordia track and field team continued the outdoor portion of their season over commencement weekend as well with the GPAC Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Dordt University in Sioux Center, Iowa. The team garnered eight first-place titles, 10 second-place wins and 12 third-place finishes. The women won the championship team score for the ninth time in a row and the men won third place.

The team participated in two more meets before the NAIA outdoor championships: the Concordia Twilight held in Seward and the Loper Twilight held at University of Nebraska Kearney in Kearney. At the Concordia Twilight, the team had five first-place wins, eight second-place wins and another eight third-place wins. The Loper Twilight netted two first-place wins, three second-place wins and four third-place wins.

The final meet for the year was the NAIA Out- door Track & Field Championship in Marion, Indiana, from May 24-26. In this meet, athletes go for an All-America award, which is given to the top eight of an event, not just podium placements.

The Bulldogs finished with seven All-America awards, including two podium finishes by juniors Josie Puelz and Zach Zohner. Puelz won second in the women’s pole vault while Zohner won third in the men’s pole vault. Overall, the women placed 23rd in team scores while the men placed 26th.

Puelz was looking to add to her list of NAIA pole vault titles, but just missed the mark. However, she kept a positive attitude and looked to the next season.

“My goals for next year are to continue to build confidence, be my teammates’ biggest fan, jump even higher, and glorify God in it all,” Puelz said.

Freshman sprinter Adrianna Rodencal, who had a great first season with the Bulldogs breaking five records, missed qualifying for the finals in the 100-meter hurdles by milliseconds, and her 4×100-meter relay team placed 17th.

“The results weren’t what I had gone in wanting to accomplish, but I am proud of how everything happened – how my first full year of track has gone,” Rodencal said. “In future years I’ll know how everything is run, have better expectations and be able to relax a lot more.”

The schedule for the indoor track and field season has been released and is set to begin Dec. 8-9 with the Bulldog Early Bird meet held in Seward. The next baseball season has not yet been announced.