The Pack wrapped up its fall practice this weekend with a three game split in the intersquad series. Team Pack won the first game of the series 6-5 Friday. Team Wolf came back to even the series on Saturday, winning 4-3 and in the rainy series finale Sunday afternoon, the teams played to an 11-11 tie.
Sophomore catcher Pratt Maynard said the series was a nice opportunity to play in a game-like atmosphere.
“Practice is a grind, so it’s fun when you get to lace them up and go compete against another squad,” Maynard said. “It was nice to compete against another squad and it was just nice to be back out there.”
The two teams were divided based on the picks made by senior infielders Dallas Poulk and Bill Edwards. The two players sat down and drafted their teams while the pitchers, except for the starters, were used for both teams depending on the situation. For the players and the coaches, just getting back onto the field and into a live game with fans and umpires around was great to participate in.
“It is fun. It is all what we love to do. We love being out here,” coach Elliott Avent said. “It is good to see the guys get after it. They went out there and handled their business well. We have a lot of work to do, but it sure was fun to get back out there.”
The series was highlighted by a power surge in games one and three. In those games both teams combined for 14 home runs, including home runs from three new players, freshman Danny Canela, freshman Terran Senay and junior transfer Ryan Mathews, who hit two home-runs in the series.
“Canela got his first home run here in the fall world series. Senay opened it up with an opposite field home run,” Avent said. “Mathews hit an absolute rocket to center field. All in all, we had a good game offensively.”
The team split the rosters down the middle, and because of this, the teams became thin at certain positions. But Avent said the effort he saw from the players and the high level that both teams played at shows the depth the Wolfpack has this year.
“With the reduction of number of people on the roster to 35, if you can get two teams to play that well against each other, it’s a great thing to have,” Avent said. “But if you can play seven innings spilt between two teams, and we play that well, it shows the depth we have and we obviously just have to push to get better.”
With all of the offense displayed in the three games, the pitching seemed to struggle. In the first game, pitchers gave up six home runs and a combined 15 hits. But Maynard said it was more good hitting than bad pitching.
“The couple scrimmages that we have had leading up to this, the bats have looked good. We have some good hitters and it showed tonight,” Maynard said. “We had a lot of guys hitting a lot of good pitches. It wasn’t like our guys were hitting 3-0 fast-balls. They had 1-2 counts, 2-2 counts and they were still hitting the ball just as hard.”
With the exclusion of the final game of the series, both teams played excellent defense through the first two games. Coming into fall practice and as the team moves forward into the spring season, the defense was a major issue that the Pack was hoping to improve on. And the improvement showed in the three games.
“It means a lot knowing you have a good defense behind you,” sophomore game one starter Cory Mazzoni said. “I think we are going to have a very good, complete team this year. The defense is going to catch the ball and that is a big help for a pitcher.”
