Back in Wisconsin

Well, as we suspected, the weekend in Panama City Beach was fast and furious. After winning our first 2 games, we dropped 4 straight to TOUGH teams. I'm confident that our non-conference schedule is going to pay off and prepare us for the WIAC, which is ALWAYS tough, day-in and day-out. The Lead Off Classic field of teams was impressive, to say the least. It was truly an incredibly tough tournament but so very good for our players to see what they need to do and who they need to beat if they want to contend at the end of the season.

We learned a lot about our team during our trip to Florida. We learned that our pitchers can throw well enough to keep us in ballgames and give us a chance. We learned that we need to spend EVERY day for the rest of the season putting MORE pressure on our players in practice, especially defensively. And we learned, among many other things, that our offensive execution has a lot of room for improvement.

We saw flashes of brilliance in Florida, but we also played pretty poor defense at times. Since getting home, however, we have determined what we need to do to make our team better and we have spent the past 3 days working very hard at those things. We have improved this week, although it still hasn't been pretty at times.

We took Tuesday off after arriving back in Eau Claire just before midnight on Monday night (after spending over 12 hours on the bus). We had 2 absolutely GORGEOUS days for practice on Wednesday and Thursday - it was nicer those 2 days here in good ole WI, than it was in PCB last weekend - seriously......today, however, is not as pleasant as typical WI spring weather rears its ugly head and reminds us that summer is not here yet. I think it was around 34 degrees today at practice time.

The positive thing is that we have only played 6 games so far, with another week of practice before we play again. The other positive thing is that our schedule is not going to get any easier during spring break. But we know that playing this kind of schedule is the best thing to do.

For the Love of the Game,
Coach Huntington