SLIAC Baseball: A Decade of Balance
We wrap up our look at the history of SLIAC spring sports with this week's sport, baseball. We will examine sport over its 30 years of SLIAC history, and wrap up the week with a send-off for SLIAC seniors. This week we take a look at the turn over the century, the 2000s, a decade that saw balance come to the league.
After a decade which saw two schools account for nine of the regular season titles the 2000s arrived and with it came a balance across the league. The '00s opened with a repeat champion but saw a total of five different programs take home a SLIAC regular-season title.
Westminster, who won the SLIAC tournament the previous year, continued their run of titles with back-to-back regular-season titles in 2000 and 2001. The strong core of Blue Jays, coached by Scott Prichard, included SLIAC Hall of Famer Paul Moyer. Moyer was named the SLIAC Player of the Year in 2000 and Co-Player of the Year in 2001. A pair of Blue Jays were also honored as CoSIDA Academic All-Americans; Mark Gifford (2001), and Alex Shelton (2005 and 2006).
Fontbonne University boasts the first SLIAC All-America baseball player in Adam Friedrich, a 2001 selection. The program snapped a streak of three losing seasons in 2003, going 25-11 overall and 17-3 in the SLIAC to claim the regular-season title. Head Coach Scott Cooper was named the SLIAC Coach of the Year with a roster that included Player of the Year Luke Wilson and Co-Newcomer of the Year Josh Stahl. The Griffins added a tournament championship in 2009 with Sean Wiley pushing his #4 seeded team to the SLIAC title and a trip to nationals.
After finishing in last place in the SLIAC standings in 2001, Blackburn College rose up in 2002 to claim the programs' first-ever regular-season title; going 17-4 in conference play behind SLIAC Player of the Year Tony Etnier. Head Coach Mike Neal, the 2002 and 2004 SLIAC Coach of the Year, and the Beavers would win 76 total games over the next three seasons, claiming another title in 2004 when they went 19-2 in the SLIAC. Along with Etnier, the Beavers were flush with talents such as Pete Schmitt, Billy Puckett, Kyle Rensing, and Dustin Hopkins; a string of five consecutive SLIAC Newcomer of the Year award winners.
The run of Newcomer of the Year award winners by Blackburn was stopped by Greenville University's Stefan Neece in 2006. Neece made an immediate impact for the Panthers, helping them to a regular-season title by going 15-5 and in addition to his Newcomer of the Year award was named the SLIAC Co-Player of the Year. The first baseman finished his career with a .402 batting average with 51 home runs and 212 runs batted in.
The 2005 season saw the return of the SLIAC Baseball Tournament and also the berth of a dynasty. The Webster baseball program spent the first 17 years of its existence on the wrong side of the won-loss record. But in 2004 they finally recorded their first winning season and took that momentum into 2005. That spring head coach Marty Hunsucker and the Gorloks went 24-14 overall and 18-3 in the SLIAC, winning both the regular-season title and tournament championship. The Gorloks followed that up with two more tournament titles in 2006, Hunsucker's final year, and 2007 when Bill Kurich took over the program. Kurich followed in his predecessors' footsteps, claiming the regular-season title as well in 2007. Overall the Gorloks would win four of the last five regular-season titles in the decade and three straight tournament championships. The Gorloks were bolstered by players like All-American's Alex Raetzloff, Brett Mueller, and Andrew Fuiten as well as SLIAC Players of the Year Bryan Bernat and Adam York.
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