It wasn\u2019t easy, but they did it.<\/p>\n
For the third consecutive year, the Sinclair Community College men\u2019s baseball team has won conference.\u00a0 Finishing with a 33-15 overall record and an 11-5 mark in conference, the Pride beat out Owens Community College by less than .50 percentage points.<\/p>\n
The Pride needed Owens to defeat Lakeland Community College in order to win the conference, according to coach Steve Dintaman.\u00a0 If Lakeland had won out, they would have finished with fours losses and won the conference.\u00a0 But, when Owens won the first game of their doubleheader against Lakeland, that cemented the Pride as 2011 OCCAC champions.<\/p>\n
In the weeks leading up to the end of the season, the Tartan Pride were not sure about their conference fate, according to Dintaman.\u00a0 He said despite the team\u2019s two-year conference championship streak, the only thing the players cared about was focusing on the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cConcerning the streak, that really doesn\u2019t come into play,\u201d Dintaman said.\u00a0 \u201cWe were just focused on the season and my guys had to endure many obstacles that were out of their control. They deserved this championship because they were the best team on the field.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dintaman said he and his team suspected that the OCCAC would be tougher than before.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing into the season I knew that this would be the toughest season,\u201d Dintaman said.<\/p>\n
The Tartan Pride started the season on a twelve game win streak that ended against non-league opponent Kellogg Community College.\u00a0 The team then went on a 2-7 streak that included the trip to play defending national champion LSU-Eunice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that winning the final game of the series in Eunice was one of our highest points of the season,\u201d Dintaman said.\u00a0 \u201cWhen we got back we just went in a little funk. We had a meeting to go over [the player\u2019s]missions and why they play the game, who they play for, et cetera.\u00a0 I think that allowed guys to refocus.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pride righted themselves after losing their 10th<\/sup> game of the year to Ashland University\u2019s JV on April 5.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t lose again until April 30, a 16-game win streak<\/p>\n What will the playoffs bring?<\/p>\n The Tartan Pride will open the regional on May 13 at 10 a.m.\u00a0 They do not yet know their opponent.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not really worried about the regional, we have an experienced group in key positions,\u201d Dintaman said.\u00a0 \u201cWe have a lot of work to do in the next week but we will be prepared. If we can put together a strong weekend, this team will have an opportunity to take Sinclair to the World Series.\u201d<\/p>\n Dintaman has said all year long that the strength of the club is the pitching.\u00a0 He mentioned Jeremiah Kerns and Austin Pressly as being key in the regionals because those two will have the first two starts.<\/p>\n \u201cIf they both give us strong performances, we could be 2-0 after Friday and that\u2019s something that we have never been able to do,\u201d Dintaman said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it will take all 25 guys, accepting their roles and giving us everything they have for us to be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It wasn\u2019t easy, but they did it. For the third consecutive year, the Sinclair Community College men\u2019s baseball team has won conference.\u00a0 Finishing with a 33-15 overall record and an 11-5 mark in conference, the Pride beat out Owens Community College by less than .50 percentage points. The Pride needed Owens to defeat Lakeland Community […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":229,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-1GA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/229"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6484"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6485,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6484\/revisions\/6485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}