Augustana’s baseball team’s last four performances have been full of ups and downs with wins against Plymouth and Saint John’s followed by two consecutive losses against Plymouth and Bluffton. The team entered this rough patch after enjoying a good streak of games which had only one loss. 

“I think it was a little bit of overconfidence. We won 15-3 in the first game against Plymouth, so I think we came out a little to relaxed, and we did not take them as seriously as we should have because they were a very good team, way better than what they showed us the first time we played,” sophomore second base player Alec McGinnis said. 

Similarly, sophomore left fielder Kyle Campbell also thinks that players themselves are to blame for the two consecutive losses. 

“It was for us. I think we lost because of ourselves. We did not play our game,” Campbell said.

Relief pitcher Jacob Irwin thinks that the team could not maintain the good start that they had in their second game against Plymouth. 

“Our spirits were high after our first win against Plymouth, and we came out with confidence to start the second game and cooled down offensively,” Irwin said. “We started the game with some really good quality at bats and we just could not maintain that. It was a tough loss.”

Irwin believes that the team took a lot from the game to work on and bounce back. The two consecutive losses could be a blow to the team’s confidence, making them question their strategies. But Campbell knows what should be done to bounce back to winning ways.

“We need to make sure that we play with energy and intensity the entire game in order to beat these teams we know we can beat,” Campbell said. 

Similarly, Irwin remembers his coach saying that we need to hate losing more than we love winning as a motivation to drive the team forward. 

McGinnis also has similar plans to bounce back to usual routine. “We got to make sure that we treat every game like it is the most important game of the year, and we got to act like every game is for playing the number one team in the nation,” McGinnis said. “Because that is the only way that we are going to play at our full potential.” 

McGinnis has full confidence in him and his fellow teammates that they are going to resume their usual business of winning. 

“We have a very talented team, a very tight group of guys and we just need to get out there and play again,” McGinnis said. 

The close bond between teammates will play a key role in how the team is going to perform because team chemistry matters in sports. Irwin believes that teammates relying on each other, picking each other up and also doing their own job at the same time is the most important ingredient of the winning recipe. 

“This is the third year that we have been together and we are just getting better as a group and as a family each year,” Irwin said.