Loper baseball deals with snow Day

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Damon Day looks out over the University of Nebraska at Kearney baseball field and wonders if the snow will ever disappear.

The coach said there's 12 inches of snow on Memorial Field, with no place to move it.

"I just wish we could get the snow off to get some ground balls," he said. "It just feels like you're buried underneath."

An even greater amount of snow in Denver postponed the Lopers' opener with Metro State this weekend, much to Day's dismay.

After getting lots of work outdoors before the snowstorm hit last weekend, his team was raring to go.

"Just imagine if you went and played basketball and all you did is dribble and shoot and then had to go play a game," Day said. "We're getting to throw and hit, but we're not getting to practice what we need to do. It's thrown a curveball to the majority of teams in the north."

UNK's opener will now be next Friday at No. 13 Emporia State. Day will be putting almost an entire new team on the field.

He's got only two starters back in junior catcher Chandler Klute and senior pitcher Mike Loseke, both preseason Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference selections.

Sixteen seniors graduated from his squad that won a school-record 38 games and finished as the Central Region runner-up, one game from the NCAA Division II College World Series. The Lopers were the regular-season champions for the first time in school history.

Day said he's enjoyed the challenge of blending his seven returning players with the new freshmen and transfers. Last year, he said it was just a matter of keeping the team on the right track.

"It's been great,'' he said. "The guys that were around last year have done a great job of instituting our philosophy and tradition at UNK the last couple of years. They've done a phenomenal job of stepping up and taking the reins of the program.''

Contact the writer:

402-444-1034, marjie.ducey@owh.com

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