Abby/Colby eyes three-peat in 2023

Co-op returns eight starters to defend title

Winning a third straight Marawood- North conference championship isn’t just an aspiration for this year’s Abbotsford/Colby co-op baseball team. It’s an expectation.

“I’d say that’s definitely a goal,” cohead coach Ryan Bargender said of winning a conference championship. “But I’d say we’re making it an expectation. And we have goals beyond that as well. We have not won a playoff game as a co-op and that’s one of our top goals. In our conference, we don’t want to overlook anyone, as there is a lot of strong tradition there, but we also want to do some damage in the playoffs.”

There are a lot of reasons to think that achieving such goals are well within the realm of possibility. Eight of those reasons come in the form of returning players who earned allconference honors last season.

Seniors Brandon Diedrich and Mateo Lopez, both of whom were named to the 2022 first-team all-conference, as well as junior JV Castillo, who took home Player of Year honors last season as a sophomore on top of his first-team all-conference selection, will hold down the left side of the infield while fronting a solid pitching rotation. Second-team all-conference selections Evan Reis, Blake Bargender and Payton Schreiber also return, as do honorable mentions Jaxon Polivka and Carlos Lara.

With a lineup full of talent, the coop seems poised to defend their conference title and potentially make some moves come playoff time. Experience and added confidence will hopefully push them over that hump.

“Last year, we got tired,” new cohead coach Brett Nelson said. “At the end of the year, we played three or four games in a row and we could just see that we were starting to get tired. Hopefully we have more endurance towards the end of the year when we have to start ramping it up.”

“Baseball is 90 percent mental, 10 percent physical,” Nelson added, “It’s all up in the head, so confidence is a big thing. With another year of experience, you see that confidence coming through.”

Having most of last year’s squad return and many of those players having put time into baseball during the offseason also means that the team can afford to dig deeper into their game during early practices, rather than just needing to focus on the basics.

“We are huge on fundamentals, but we are able to get deeper because these kids have seen it over and over,” Bargender said. “Last year, we came into the season with so many holes that the first half of the season was trying to figure out where all the puzzle pieces fit. And while we still have some of that this year, it’s not nearly as much.”

In addition to the experience that the team brings to the table, the coaches see the camaraderie amongst the players as one of their biggest strengths.

“We have a really, really close-knit team,” Nelson said. “They do everything together. They’re hanging out as friends all of the time, which you can see on the field as well. Everyone knows what’s expected. They’ve been in the program long enough and how they fit together.”

Each player buying into their role on the team, regardless of what that role might be, is another aspect of the solid foundation that Abbotsford’s coaching staff believes the team has built for itself.

In terms of turning those strengths into results on the diamond, both coaches agreed that a big part of it is tapping into that newfound confidence, especially when it comes to playoff baseball. During conference play, the co-op is playing against teams that will be in Division 3 or 4 come the WIAA playoffs. Finding that same confidence when playing against larger schools in the Division 2 playoffs will be key in taking the next step forward.

One step towards that end is scheduling games with bigger schools for the team’s non-conference schedule, which is something that the co-op has been trying to do more of recently. Early games against Rice Lake and Lakeland will put them up against fellow D2 programs and a matchup against last year’s state-runner up Regis Ramblers will provide some early challenges for the Abby/Colby squad.

The season opens with the team taking on Rice Lake, Regis and Spooner in an event hosted at the Woodside Sports Complex in Mauston. The two day event will span both Friday, March 31 and Saturday, April 1.