MACOMB, Illinois (NEWS3) – The opening game for the Western Illinois University baseball season will be this weekend when WIU plays Western Kentucky University.
Before entering the new season, Head Coach Andy Pascoe and the teammates have welcomed three new staff members.
“It has already been changing, obviously, we didn’t have a pitching coach so that was huge,” Jack Warkentien said. “That came just for me personally and to have a full coaching staff to get a lot of weight of Coach Pascoe shoulder a lot of duties get delegated more easily and help things get to run a lot smoother and help a lot more things get done for our program.”
With a full coaching staff and players with added experience, there is a lot of hope going into the new season.
“I think we are going to be really good this year,” Warkentien said. “We have a lot of fifth years that decide to come back and play because we think we can win and the other younger guys buy into that and just a winning culture that we are trying to set here.”
To prepare for the offseason, the crew plays another team outside of the conference.
“It is really good to play outside competitions in the fall,” Warkentien said. “So when outside competition comes, it just allows us to compete even harder. We are not playing ourselves and it’s exciting so it’s definitely good that we have that.”
With the added experience, Warkentien and the team are looking to improve on last year’s season.
“I would like to win every start of the non conference right away and just establish a winning record going into the conference and I think that is going to be huge for the overall team confidence,” Warkentien said.
For more information on the baseball team, go to https://goleathernecks.com/.
