Winding up in a new conference
Caleb Sanford
Issue date: 2/24/10 Section: Sports
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"Practicing indoors is tough," said head baseball coach Mike Davenport. "We start practices at five in the morning, and we focus on learning as much as possible before going out onto the field. But you can only practice so long before you hit a wall in your development. Burnout happens much quicker indoors but we are headed in the right direction. Once it gets warmer, we'll have an easier time."
Like every sports team at Madison College, the baseball team has to adjust to switching conferences after spending 39 years in the Wisconsin Technical College Conference. Their new conference, the North Central Community College Conference (N4C), brings more competition and more conference games. The end result is a tougher season overall. However, the Madison College baseball team doesn't see the move into the N4C as a bad thing.
"Anything that increases competitiveness is good," said Davenport. "We have a lot more conference games this year. We have essentially the same schedule, but the games are more important for all involved. Since a team's conference record helps determine your tournament seeding there is more tangible value in each game. Every team (in the conference) is more motivated and focused on winning, which leads to better competition."
Madison College joins a conference with several established baseball teams. The most prominent and consistent team is Joliet Junior College. They are riding a streak of four-straight seasons with 40 wins or more and were national champions (Division III) two years ago. They have also won the N4C conference championship the last three years. Madison College faced Joliet Junior College last year and split a doubleheader with them, winning the first game 2-1, and losing the second 9-5.
Triton College, whose baseball team competes at the Division I level, also has a well-run program and won the Region IV championship last year. The WolfPack baseball team is the only team at the school that competes at the Division II level. All other teams, besides Triton, are in Division III.
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