The 2010 Heidelberg baseball team raised the bar for the program (Courtesy of ncaa.org)
The Heidelberg baseball team is certainly still hurting today. The Student Princes were within sight of the World Series’ final day, but Linfield’s 5-run 8th inning turned a 4-1 HU lead into a 6-4 deficit heading to the 9th. The Berg was unable to muster one last come back and their season came to a bitter sweet conclusion in Appleton.
While Matt Palm and his players were disappointed that they fell short of their ultimate goal, time will hopefully give them a different perspective on the 2010 season. The initial disappointment will slowly become a point of pride. As it should.
Any baseball coach will tell you that building a successful program is a process. Rome wasn’t built in a day, as they say. The foundation is laid with hiring the right coaches and starting to recruit the right kids.
The building continues by recruiting more depth and developing and motivating that talent into a winning program. In my mind this is the most impressive piece of the puzzle. Almost every team thinks they can win every game, but how do you actually start doing it? How do you make that show up in the win column? Ask Matt Palm. He took over a Heidelberg program that was a far cry from Appleton. Truth be told, the Berg was a far cry from winning the OAC. Like a lot of programs making the conference tournament was a great season. Not anymore.
Palm has consistently recruited quality young men over the last decade and 2010 was the culmination of the ground work laid by a decade of hard work.
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Steve Decker
Steve Decker and Everett Thomas will leave campus as the first seniors ever to play in a World Series for Heidelberg. But I bet if you ask them they will tell you about values and attitudes instilled in them by the upperclassmen when they were young. That’s the beauty of the growth. Kids who never got the joy of stepping on the field in Appleton know that they contributed to it in a very tangible way. That achievement was shared by the entire program.
As time passes and the 2010 season is viewed at a distance the accomplishments will overshadow any disappointment. That’s not to stay that the disappointment won’t fuel the team to work even harder heading into 2011. That will surely be the case. But when we take a step back and look at the 2010 season on it’s own the list of successes will be distinguished.
- The program’s first regional championship and World Series appearance
- The program’s first (and second) World Series win and a solid 4th place showing
- A win over #1 Johns Hopkins at the World Series
- A school record for wins (42)
- A 4th straight OAC championship
- A school record five All-Americans
And those are just the biggest. I could have gone on for 15 minutes listing all of the regional, OAC and academic accolades. You get the point, this was a banner year for any program.
But the best thing about the 2010 team is that almost the entire team returns in 2011. The Berg will have some big shoes to fill replacing their field general Steve Decker behind the dish. The All-American was a leader on the field and a catalyst on offense. From his familiar 2nd spot in the order Decker always seemed to be in the middle of things. He finished the season with an outstanding .389 average. The three year starter also drove in 52 runs. And his .990 fielding percentage speaks for itself.
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Everett Thomas
Everett Thomas leaves Heidelberg with a sparkling 14-3 career record. The righty saw his innings pitched drop from a high of 69.1 his sophomore year to 38 his junior year and 45.1 this season. But his career is a perfect example of how the program has made the next step. Thomas is the consummate team player. Like his teammates he truly believes in doing whatever Coach Palm asks of him no matter what it is because winning is the only goal. Every guy has a job to do and is prepared to do it. That’s why it’s so great to see Thomas pitch so well when his number was called. He allowed just 1 run in 5.2 innings against Linfield yesterday. That may have supplanted his CG 2-hit shutout of Wooster in a 2008 Mideast regional elimination game as the biggest performance of his career.
Heidelberg had every reason to be disappointed last night. They were so close to their goal and they stumbled. But they also have every reason to be proud. Proud of everything they accomplished. Proud of where the program is headed. Proud of how they represented their school, their conference and their state. 2010 was a great season. 2011 could be even better. Until then, thanks for the ride.
Filed under: Division III
Chad, the experience of just being in Appleton was awesome. Each team is assigned host families who are responsible for welcoming the teams and putting them at ease in the tournament setting. The media is fantastic in covering all of the events. Local youngsters go up to the players and ask for their autographs. Even former ball players come up to the present young men and express their appreciation of their skills. The call of all of the Berg fans when they left the stadium was, “See you next year.”, and you could just feel that they meant it.