Cleary baseball team to play for USCAA title

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HOWELL — When many teams opt to concentrate on young players, their struggles are reflected in their win-loss record.

But, for Cleary University’s baseball team, a shift to youth could lead to their sport’s ultimate prize.

The Cougars, 18-25 in their second season, are off to Glens Falls, N.Y., this weekend for their first appearance in the USCAA’s Small College World Series.

“We had several seniors step up this year and say they would love to take a different role,” Cleary coach Karl Kling said in an interview this week. “Jack Ropp is one of them. Jack was our starting shortstop last year and realized with where the team was shaping up that his impact would be greater on the mound.”

And it has been. Ropp, a senior,  has thrown six complete games this season, second-most in the USCAA, and tossed a team-high 66 innings with a 2.32 ERA. He is 4-3 on the season.

But, Kling says, Ropp’s influence extends beyond the field.

“Just by showing some of our younger pitchers, like Ryan (Schaffer) and Gunnar Gail of Brighton, how to be pitchers,” the coach said. “Because he changed his role, it allowed us to bring on Johnny Grable from Fowlerville, who became a starter at shortstop for us.”

Schaffer, a sophomore, is 7-0 this season with a 1.61 ERA. Gail is 3-4 with a 4.28 ERA.

“We’ve pitched well all year and our defense is second in the country by fielding percentage,” Kling said. “We don’t make a lot of mistakes defensively, so if we can rely on (pitching and defense), we’ll just need some timely hitting.”

The Cougars hit .268 as a team this season, with senior Dugan Roosa leading the way at .315.

Cleary’s 18-25 mark includes seven losses by one run, the mark, Kling said, of a young team.

“Whenever you play young players, there’s going to be aches and pains,” he said. “Our biggest problem early in the year was stranding runners in scoring position, and a lot of times it’s just a kid getting acclimated to playing at a faster pace.”

Part of that, too, was Cleary’s schedule, which included Division 1 foes like Oakland (although those games were rained out), Butler and IPFW. The Cougars also played three teams in the top 25 in the NAIA and played Rochester College and Wright State-Lake, both of whom also will be competing for the USCAA title.

“We had the second-hardest schedule in the country,” Kling said. “When it all came down to it, our strength of schedule, our pitching and some statistical categories we ranked really high on. When they looked at other teams, we might have been 2-3 games below some other teams as far as records, but our competition was much harder.”

The  Cougars begin play Monday at 11 a.m. against Penn State-Beaver (19-19), with the winner taking on No. 1 seed St. Joseph’s of Vermont (47-11) at 6:30 p.m. The loser begins play in the consolation bracket at 11 a.m. Tuesday.

Ropp will start the opener, while Schaffer will start the second game.

The championship will be held Thursday.

“I told my players if we’re going to go up against the top two teams in the country, I wanted our two top pitchers there,” Kling said.

The Cougars will participate in a banquet and a home run derby on Sunday before an early wakeup call on Monday.

“We have a chance to win a national championship,” Kling said. “If you look at the North and baseball, there’s not a heck of a lot of teams who go into their season saying they have a legitimate chance of winning a national title at any level, and we have that opportunity.”

Regardless of what happens this week, Kling, who has a sunny disposition, has reason to be upbeat about the future of his program.

“We’ve done pretty well this season, but we expect to do better next year, because a vast majority of our players are coming back,” he said. “We’ll know what holes we have to fill, which won’t be that many, because of the guys we have and those who are coming in.”

The program is at 47 players, with 28 making the trip to New York.

“Next season the JV will be split off from the varsity and be its own entity,” Kling said.

The team has been playing its home games at Parker Middle School, but Kling says there is talk of building a stadium on-campus “in the very near future,” he said. “That’s a conversation we’ll have when we get back from New York.”

But first, there’s a national tournament to play in, the chance for a young team to finish the season on the highest of notes.

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