Published: March 09, 2007
The Captain's Corner features insights from each of the St.
John's baseball team's three senior co-captains - second baseman
Sam DeLuca, outfielder
Chris Joachim and catcher
Brendan Monaghan. In the fifth installment of a weekly series
on RedStormSports.com, Joachim blogs about starting the annual
Spring Break trip, the team getting in the win column and beating
the No. 8 team in the country.
Leaving for Texas: Heading into
this Spring Break trip to Texas the team hoped to turn our season
around. We had high expectations that we felt we were not
living up to, but we had a chance to start over and get things
rolling. The travel plans went better than they had the first two
weeks, so we hoped that was the start to a good week … Starting the Lamar Classic: We arrived at
Vincent-Beck Stadium on Friday afternoon preparing to take on a
tough Kansas State club, but unfortunately our attitude and
preparation didn’t translate to a win. After that loss, sitting at
0-7, we knew we had to shake things up. Later that night, the
captains called a team meeting to address the attitude and mindset
of the team. We talked about those things and how we could solve
our problems and left with a good feeling … Getting Back on Track: The next night, we
came out swinging the bats, pitched well and got our first win
against Cal Santa Barbara. We jumped on the home team, Lamar, on
Sunday and had the feeling that we were picking up some momentum
heading into the week … The Makings of an
Upset: On Tuesday night we were heading to Houston to take
on the No. 8 ranked team in the country, the Rice Owls. Everybody
was really pumped for this game, especially since we played them
tough last year but came up short. We scored crucial runs when we
needed them and the pitchers did a great job controlling the game
as we took down Rice 7-6. It was a gut-wrenching game that we
battled through together and came out on top. It took a lot out of
us physically and mentally, but it showed that when we play our
game, we could be one of the best teams in the country … The Road Trip Continues: We have been on the
road for almost a week now and it is starting to affect some of the
guys physically, as half of the team seems to be sick with some
type of virus. We knew that we still had a tough three-game set
coming up at McNeese State so we were just trying to get through
the rest of the weekend and finish on a strong note … The Series Opener at McNeese State: We
wanted to carry our momentum into this series, but we came out a
little flat and lost the first game of three. The attitude and
confidence we seemed to be playing with all week was shaken, but I
think the loss will wake us up and get us back on the winning
track. We are pretty excited to come out for the next two games and
finish this long road trip up on a positive winning note and
hopefully head back to New York with a couple more wins.