By Jacob Brown, Staff Writer
Newman University’s baseball team is at the halfway mark of its season and so far has put together a 4-27 record.
Now, the team is looking for ways to improve in the last half of the season.
Senior outfielder Kaynan Kaku is leading the charge offensively for the Jets with a team-high batting average of .379, 39 hits, 19 RBI’s and nine stolen bases.
Defensively, the Jets are led by senior right-handed pitcher Alex Gillig, who has racked up 24 strikeouts, and junior catcher/outfielder Peyton Mitchell, who’s had 95 putouts.
Head Coach Lance Spongberg is in his first season with the Jets. Before coming to Newman, Spongberg was an assistant coach and pitching coach for Florida’s Southeastern University.
The Vantage was unable to reach Spongberg for a comment before publication.
Fran Montanez, a senior right-handed pitcher, said the season hasn’t gone the way the team expected, but he is confident in how the team continues to show up and compete everyday.
Graduate student catcher Thomas Munn added that the team struggled early in the season to score but said that the offensive swing is starting to pick up.
“We just need to work on both sides of the ball being their best at the same time,” he said.
The Jets have lost six games this season within two runs.
“As a team, we need to continue improving our consistency, especially in execution in key moments so we can turn close games into wins,” Montanez said.
A year ago at this time, the Jets had eight wins but finished out the rest of the season 2-15. Both Munn and Montanez were a part of that team.
They said they look forward to improving during the last half of the season.
“We have some solid conference opponents coming up and can really show people we have the ability to turn our season around,” Munn said.
The team still has 18 games left in the regular season.
The Jets will next travel to Emporia to face Emporia State. Today, the first pitch is at 5 p.m. The team will play Friday at 3 p.m. and Saturday at noon.
PHOTO: Courtesy, Newman Athletics
