Students Put Together a Baseball Club Team
A club baseball team was re-cently formed at the University by three sophomores looking to continue playing the game at a competitive level in college. Prior to this club, the University only had the main Monmouth team, and anyone else looking to play baseball was forced to look outside the University for a team or settle for intramural softball.
Joe D’Amico, a sophomore majoring in history and second-ary education, was one of the founding members of the club team.
“I didn’t ever want to stop playing baseball. My friends and I were very disappointed when we came here and there was no team, so we started one so that we never had to stop playing at the competitive level,” said D’Amico.
D’Amico, along with sopho-mores Chris Bruno and Justin Morik, split the work in order to get this team started. They had to write up a detailed constitu-tion, find insurance, an advisor, a league to join, equipment to use and enough students to put together a full roster.
Bruno is currently organizing a roster, attendance and dues, but he said finding an advisor with spare time to devote to a club team such as this was one of the more difficult parts of put- ting it all together. “We talked to several staff members and many of them were too busy to take on this responsibility, which is understandable. Eventually, we talked to Tom McCarthy and he was very enthusiastic about the team and confirmed that he would be the team’s advisor.”
McCarthy has been with the University for four and a half years as one of the psychologi-cal counselors at the Office of Counseling and Psychological Services.
When he discovered the up-and-coming club baseball team, he decided to take on the role of advisor. McCarthy explained how he has always enjoyed base-ball and played as kid but never at the college level.
“I wanted to be involved with a club on campus…outside of my primary role on campus as a psychological counselor,” he ex-plained.
One of the other obstacles fac-ing the newly formed team is finding a field to play on. Ac-cording to D’Amico and Bruno, University Baseball Head Coach Dean Ehehalt was not thrilled with the idea of a club team us-ing the field or equipment in the gym and said the team cannot use it at all.
“It is a nice to see that we have a club baseball team at the Uni-versity,” said Coach Ehehalt, “Extracurricular activities and involvement are instrumental within the campus community and provide a lifelong experi-ence for the participants. We wish those playing and partici-pating nothing but the best.”
In regards to use of the field, he explained as far as facilities are concerned, that is handled through the Director of Recre-ation and not up to him.
The team plans on joining the NCBA Divison II league for this upcoming spring where they will be facing teams such as Mont-clair, Rider, La Salle and other schools in the area. The club has already met a few times for prac-tices on a field nearby off cam-pus as well as getting together on campus just to throw in prepara-tion for the upcoming season.
D’Amico estimates the cost to play to be around $50-$75 a stu-dent. This would cover insurance policy, jerseys, transportation to and from games, two regulation
bats and five dozen baseballs. The club team will be represent-ing the University and currently has about 25 members signed up and 15 players who consistently show up for practices as of right now.
Bruno said, “The team is very excited for the start of the season. We are practicing hard and look-ing forward to playing against competitive schools. We are pumped to win many games and bring a great name to Monmouth University.”
Brendan Mallon is a junior at the University and jumped at the chance to play as soon as he heard about the team. “I hope to get my feeling on the field back after not playing for a while,” ex-plained Mallon, “I also hope to make some new friends out of it and hopefully make some good memories.”
The club team’s first official game is scheduled for March 31. The team will be having a double header against LaSalle and will be played on a nearby field off-campus.
Correction:
In last week’s issue, the paper printed that Baseball Coach Dean Ehehalt remarked that he was not in favor of the University starting a club baseball team. The Outlook later found out that sources who reported that information had not actually spoken to Coach Ehehalt themselves. To the paper’s knowledge the baseball coach never made the statement. The Outlook apologizes for any misunderstandings or inconveniences that may have resulted from our error.
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