Hornets are No. 6 in the Nation
Shenandoah University finished the 2010 baseball season as the nation’s No. 6 team in a poll released late last week by the American Baseball Coaches Association.
The Hornets were ranked in each of the six ABCA polls this season, starting out in the No. 8 spot after finishing the 2009 campaign 38-10.
Illinois Wesleyan, the 2010 national champion, received all eight first-place votes to capture the top spot in the poll. SU was ranked behind Cortland (N.Y.) State, Linfield (Ore.), Johns Hopkins (Md.) and Heidelberg (Ohio) in the 30-team poll. All four of those schools participated in the 2010 NCAA National Championships.
This is the second-straight season the Hornets finished the year in the nation's top 10. SU finished No. 6 in the 2009 final ABCA poll as well.
_________________________________
For the second straight year the season-ending defeat came at Time Warner Cable Field at Fox Cities Stadium in Grand Chute, Wisconsin at the NCAA Baseball Championships. SU, which won 38 games for the second consecutive year, was the only team in the 2010 championships that had also qualified in 2009.
In between a season-opening 11-10 loss to Richard Stockton (prior to which the team had only practiced outside two times) and the 7-4 defeat to JHU, the Hornets won those school-record-tying 38 games, their first-ever USA South Conference Tournament and a second consecutive South Region title.
A program best-ever 12 players earned All-USA South, USA South All-Tournament or Fayetteville Regional All-Tournament honors with Scott Van Dusseldorp and Greg Van Sickler being named USA South Conference Player and Pitcher of the Year, respectively.
Van Sickler, who led the team in wins and finish second in batting average for the second consecutive year, added ABCA South Region Player of the Year and first team All-America honors to his resume as well.
His classmate, Kevin Brashears, joined Van Sickler as a first team All-America. Both men were named first team by D3baseball.com and the American Baseball Coaches Association and Van Sickler capped his outstanding season off by being named ESPN The Magazine third team Academic All-America.
This is the first time in school history that a student-athlete earned both academic and athletic All-America honors in the same season.
The individual honors, while impressive, are just the 'tip of the iceberg' of the team's success.
Off the field, 17 players earned USA South All-Academic team honors (at least a 3.0 GPA in both semesters) with Brashears, Van Sickler and Jake Yocum all earning Academic All-District III accolades.
When the earthquake hit Haiti in January, the SU athletic department and its Student-Athlete Advisory Committee (SAAC) decided to focus its community service fund-raising efforts on earthquake relief.
The SAAC set a goal of $500 raised from the department's 20 teams and 400 student-athletes; baseball met this goal with a $500 donation as the initiative started and eventually contributed over $750 of the better than $2300 that SU donated to the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR).
This total far outstripped the total of any of the 19 other intercollegiate teams and was a major reason that the department won the USA South Conference 'Pennies for a Purchase' service initiative crown.
Coach Kevin Anderson, who is closing in on 200 wins at Shenandoah and 350 for his career, welcomes back five position starters and pitchers who recorded 32 of the team's 38 wins back next season. Anderson's club was ranked in the nation's Top 25 all season long in 2010, ending with a No. 7 ABCA ranking and ninth by D3baseball.com.
A third straight South Region title and accompanying trip to Appleton is more than possible – the quicker-than-anticipated exit in 2010 has already begun to fuel the fire for 2011.
Share