After having its season-opening series with Cal rained out two weekends ago, the Oregon Ducks’ club baseball team is ready and raring to go in 2007.
The 2006 season and subsequent offseason was certainly one to forget, as the team saw its championship hopes dashed by Colorado State, had former players Travis Chock and Peter Phillips charged with Class B misdemeanors following an incident at the team’s batting cage, and lost now-former coach Brad Ficek after negotiations to try and allow Chock back with the team.
All that aside, pitcher and club coordinator Jonathan Jwayad calls the outlook this season “optimistic.”
“I feel like our team has a chance to do as well or better than last year’s team,” Jwayad said. “We’re young. Half of our new players are freshmen or sophomores.”
The tryouts this season featured fewer players than in the past, but more of those who made the cut have a chance to make an immediate impact, Jwayad said.
“I’ve been here for three years and progressively tryouts have become more and more,” he said. “The quality of players trying out has increased dramatically and the number of players trying has decreased. It seems when I first started three years ago we’d have 80 guys try out, but 40 of them didn’t have a chance. But now that the University’s had success, the guys that have never played before don’t even come.”
One of the benefits of these tryouts is an infusion of young talent that the team hopes will carry it past the precipice and into the winner’s circle of the National College Baseball Association World Series, which the Ducks have reached three years in a row only to lose out to perpetual powerhouse Colorado State every time.
Two of the first-timers, Cameron Gaulke and Corey Johnson, both freshmen, make up what Jwayad calls “the best outfield Oregon’s had in years.”
Also joining the Ducks will be new second baseman Andrew Murphy, a former member of the Oregon football team who left the team after breaking a bone and choosing the less contact-intensive world of baseball.
It won’t be all youngsters for the Ducks, though, as two-thirds of their starting rotation includes seniors. Returning starters Jay Tlougan and Bryan Hansen will anchor the starting three and will be joined by one of either Jwayad, Murphy or southpaw sophomore David Tinsley.
The man choosing the third starter is also a newcomer, sort of.
Kenny Swartout is in his first year as head coach, but has significant experience with the Ducks as a member of the team from 2001-03.
“Kenny is a coach that’s all business,” Jwayad said. “He’s an alumni, so he understands how club baseball works. He’s also brought in assistant coach Dan Grice, who went to Churchill High School and played for the Double-A Cubs.”
Ultimately, Jwayad says the team has one goal: to return to the NCBA World Series and bring back a title for the Oregon Ducks.
“We want to win the national championship,” Jwayad said. “We want to get to Fort Myers this year and prove that Oregon baseball is what it is.”
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