The Winthrop baseball team started off on a great foot the weekend of Feb. 14-16. The Eagles kicked off the season playing against the University of Maine Black Bears in a three-game series spanning the three days.
The Eagles got their first win of the season against the Black Bears, with the final score on opening day being 3-1.
The Eagles claimed a 9-4 victory on day two of the series, after being down in the first couple of innings.
The Eagles concluded the series against Maine by winning the final game 13-4 — winning the series with a 3-0 sweep.
Tom Riginos, head coach of the baseball team, shared his insight about the 2020 season and his thoughts on moving forward with the team.
“Every season I get excited about the team we have,” Riginos said. “This year we have a lot of new players on the team and I am excited about the process of building this team every day and the challenges that we will face during the season. I am excited about the growth of
this team.”
Riginos spoke on the team’s chemistry, as well as some of the strengths they have looking forward to being an advantage this season.
“I think the chemistry and culture of the program is very good,” Riginos said. “We spend a lot of time and effort building the winning culture of our program. One of the many strengths of this team will be leadership.”
The Eagles have eight seniors as well as two graduate student ‘seniors’ — a strong group of upperclassmen leaders of the team.
“We have a great group of seniors that have experienced a great deal of success over the last couple of years,” Riginos said. “In baseball, you want to be strong up the middle and I feel very good about the middle of our diamond with Spencer Yankle (Catcher), Tyler Baker (SS), Joe McNamara (2B) and Scout Mcfalls (CF).”
“As far as weaknesses go, I never consider our teams to have weakness; I call it opportunity for our players. We are going to have the opportunity for many of our players to make sufficient contributions to our team this year,” Riginos said.
Looking forward, Coach Riginos is confident in his team and sets expectations he knows they will achieve.
“I expect this team to compete and to be focused every day we take the field,” Riginos said. “This team will hold each other accountable, they will be selfless. If this team does those things on a consistent basis this will be the byproduct of winning a championship.”
Fans talked about the great energy brought to the first game of the season.
“This was my first ever college baseball game,” Herbert Jones III, Winthrop University student in attendance at the second game of the season said. “The atmosphere and the energy was really great. I really liked how the Eagles came back and took the lead. I am definitely going to go to more Eagles baseball games.”
In addition to the great start of the season, the team received news that two players, Colten Rendon and Spencer Yankle, were named among the top 20 draft prospects. Yankle was named the 14th best 2020 prospect while Rendon was named the 20th. Additionally, CJ Conrad and Tyler Jones were named second and third best for the 2021 draft, respectively.
Winthrop continues the season at home on Feb. 21-23 at Winthrop Ballpark against Canisius College. The Winthrop Eagles and the Canisius Griffins will play a four-game series, with the first game being at 4 p.m. on Feb. 21, followed by a double header on day two starting at 1 p.m., and the fourth and final game of the series being at noon on Sunday, Feb. 23.
Photo provided by Winthrop Athletics
