Spring at McMurry is a wonderful time, especially with the beginning of spring sports. A highlight of this season is the McMurry University baseball team. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Entering their 25th<\/sup> year at McMurry, the team has a lot of pressure riding on them this season. To commence their 25th<\/sup> anniversary, the team celebrated with a \u201cfirst pitch dinner\u201d and auction. The event featured a speaker\u2019s panel hosted by Mike Ezekiel, Head Coach Byington, Senior Out fielder Mike Gonzales, and new assistant coach, Josh Lee. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The event also featured a ceremony honoring former baseball coach Lee Driggers, and the announcement of the All-Quarter Century team. Former assistant coach Jason Marshall was chosen as the key note speaker, along with, Vice President for Student Affairs and Intercollegiate Athletics Sam Ferguson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0A newcomer to the team is assistant coach Josh Lee, a former McMurry standout with noteworthy credentials. Lee is the only McMurry baseball layer to have won American Southwest Conference Player of the Year, not once, but twice. Josh Lee helped the War Hawks take conference titles in both 2001 and 2004. Lee was also a member of the all-ASC team in all four seasons. Lee was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the 30th<\/sup> round of the June 2004 MLB Amateur Draft. Following his time in the minors, Lee went on to coach for several college baseball teams before committing to McMurry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Adding to their historical 25th<\/sup> season, senior outfielder Mike Gonzales and junior right-handed pitcher Nick Hamel were both listed on the ASC\u2019s \u201c24 Players to Watch\u201d list. Gonzales is one of three outfielders and Hamel is one of 13 pitchers. Gonzales leads the team with a .372 batting average in 39 starts. He also had a team best 55 hits in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This season, the War Hawks will compete in 39 regular season games. Of the 39 games, 20 will be at Walt Driggers Field. McMurry will begin conference play on February 21-22 against the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Arkansas. Afterwards, the War Hawks will play a series against last year\u2019s champions, Howard Payne. To conclude the season, the War Hawks will face cross-town rival Hardin Simmons. The 2020 American Southwest Conference Baseball Championship Tournament Series will begin April 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the preseason poll, McMurry is projected to finish 12th<\/sup>, posting a 10-29 record for last season. Concordia University\u2014with a 19 out of 24 lead\u2014Is expected to take first, followed by East Texas Baptist University, and UT Dallas. The War Hawks will open their season February 7th<\/sup> and 8th<\/sup> in a three-game series against Schreiner in Kerrville, Texas. The home opener for the War Hawks is a Friday double header against St. Thomas University set for February 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spring at McMurry is a wonderful time, especially with the beginning of spring sports. A highlight of this season is the McMurry University baseball team. Entering their 25th year at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":545,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","clearfix"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/baseball.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":546,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544\/revisions\/546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mcm.edu\/herald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}