While coach Elliott Avent’s team continues to rise through the collegiate rankings, another N.C. State baseball team is flying under the radar.

The club baseball team is shooting through its season after starting 4-4. Since then, the team boasts a 13-3 record to stand at 17-7 overall and 13-3 in the conference. The Wolfpack ranks No. 12 in the nation.

State finalized a spot in regionals after beating defending National Club Baseball Association World Series champion North Carolina by the mercy rule in eight innings on Sunday, its second win in three games against the Tar Heels.

“With this win right here we clinch [the conference],” coach Matt Tunnell said after the 10-0 thrashing of UNC. “We get to go to the regionals, which will be held May 3 and [May] 4 at Cary at the USA national training facility.”

The team has been strong in tough situations this season, according to Tunnell.

“We’ve had a lot of close, tight games this year, but we’ve managed to come back in lot of them. These boys showed a lot of fight,” he said.

Being a club sport, the team has to finance everything it does. The athletic department is not allowed to donate funds. This is important for the coaches especially because it means that there is no money to compensate them for their efforts.

“We owe it all to our coaches. They don’t get paid anything,” senior catcher Adam Walker said. “They’re out here all the time. They’re dedicated.”

Coaches who volunteer their time like Tunnell and his staff are a rarity in club baseball, according to Walker.

“The other teams don’t have [real coaches]. They usually have player coaches,” he said. “[The coaches] don’t get enough credit for what they do.”

The Pack has four games left before the regionals, and the team has a huge confidence level going into it.

“I think we’ve got all the confidence in the world. We’ve got good momentum going into the regionals,” junior infielder Ryan Lambert said.

The team has benefited from a deeper lineup than last season, where although the team preformed well, it had lost several players.

“Last year we lost a lot of guys to grades and to injury from the fall to the spring. We lost eight guys, and I’d say about five of them were key guys,” Tunnell said.

The team went into this season knowing that it had to fill some holes.

“We just had a really selective tryout process. [We] had some good young kids coming in. We’ve got about three or four freshmen starting for us,” Lambert said.

Because of all the improvements, the players said the team is better than it has been in a long time.

“We think we can go all the way. We’ve got a lot of talent. This is the most talent we’ve ever had on one team,” Walker said.

And with regionals and the club baseball World Series coming up, the team is confident it can make it far, according to Lambert.

“We can only go up from here,” he said.