URBANDALE, Iowa — A Month ago, baseball players across the state were at home wondering, would the season happen. Here we are, first week of June and teams are back feeling some sense of normalcy. For the Urbandale J-Hawks, the thought they wouldn’t get a chance to defend their 4A Titles, loomed heavily on their mind.
"I definitely did not think we were going to have a baseball season."
“I thought sometimes maybe Ty Langenberg maybe threw his last pitch against Iowa City West in the quarters and Cal Watson maybe threw his last pitch at the state tournament to beat Johnston in the State Championship game.”
So when news hit that there’d be a season.
“I was actually fishing with some friends and my buddy yelled across the pond to check Twitter and I was like, let’s go, BASEBALL!”
The J-Hawks like most teams across the state are back on the field.
“It’s great to be with the team and back practicing it almost feels normal again."
“It means a lot, just to be back out here and be with the guys out on the field practicing looking forward to games, I mean to have thought that we maybe wouldn’t get a season a couple of weeks ago it’s a lot.”
Guidelines are in place, temperature checks upon arrival, six feet of separation, no spitting, and no high fives just to name a few.
“We’re all still getting used to it but we’d rather be here doing it than not doing it at all.”
For this group, they have high standards to meet. The J-Hawks are back to back 4A Champs after all.
“We should be hungry for another state championship that’s something that each of these teams the last two years have built upon and I think that even though this year’s team is new we have the talent and we know how to play baseball and we can get it done.”
To do that, pitching depth will be the key, and with Covid-19 delaying the start of baseball workouts, it will ripple into the season.
“There’s guys that will be 40-60 pitches that right now would have been 60-90 pitches so there is going to be a big difference to how we juggle our pitching staff, but we do have the numbers to do that I think a lot of people in the CIML also have numbers to do that.”
That being said, June 15th can’t come soon enough as the players wait to take the field for their first game.
“Just getting on the field and excited to play that first game against Hoover will be will be really fun almost an emotional game because of how far you know we've come with this, you know, Covid-19, I've played it, you know my whole life it's a lifestyle, have stuck with it for all these years I mean it means everything to you know be able to play my senior season and keep my career going, I can't think of a better way to spend the summer than playing baseball.”
Head Coach Jeremy Heinen said that the CIML teams will be sticking with a Monday Wednesday Friday schedule for the regular season.