Season Preview: Rocori Baseball Prepares for Start of 2018 Season
The time of the year we’ve all been waiting for is finally among us. The 2018 Rocori baseball season is finally here.
Practice is officially underway for the Spartans as they prepare for the start of the 2018 season, which begins in less than two weeks against Fergus Falls.
Rocori enters the 2018 season having put together a nice 2017 campaign a year ago. The Spartans finished the season fourth in the Central Lakes Conference with a record of 9-7 and earned the No. 2 seed in the Section 5-3A playoffs, while concluding the year with a record of 16-9 overall.
The Spartans made a deep push in the section playoffs once again last year. Rocori, which fell into the losers bracket after the opening round of the tournament, impressively fought its way back to come within one game of the section championship, ultimately falling to St. Cloud Apollo 1-0 to end the season.
The Spartans had 10 players from last season that will not be back with the team in 2018 following graduation, but Rocori returns a lot of talent to this year’s team.
On last year’s team, the Spartans had 11 juniors on their varsity roster, while continuing to have a large amount of younger talent rise up towards the varsity level. That will be very valuable for Rocori once again as it prepares to kick off the new year.
The coaching staff for this season’s Spartans team will look rather similar to that of year’s past. Rocori will be led once again by varsity head coach Jeff Illies, who will kick off his 13th season as the varsity coach. In his 12 years leading up to the 2018 season, Illies has tallied a record of 193-102 (65 percent) overall.
Rounding out the rest of the varsity coaching staff will include Jon Czech, Russ Huls, John “Boogs” Rausch and Gary Distel. The junior varsity group will be coached by Aaron Schneider, Derek Sauer and Dave Hinkemeyer, while the ninth grade teams will be coached by Dean Kron and Greg Spanier.
Rocori kicks off the 2018 regular season at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, April 10 against the Fergus Falls Otters in Fergus Falls.
Follow Rocori Baseball on Social Media
Throughout the 2018 season, make sure to follow all the action on social media to catch news on all things Rocori baseball.
You can follow us on Twitter and on Facebook to receive daily and weekly posts in regards to team news, game information, results and more!
And, as always, you can follow Rocori baseball on GameChanger to catch live play-by-play information during each game this season.
Check out our Website
Something that we will continue to do during the 2018 season is update the new team website here at rocoribaseball.com.
At the Rocori baseball website, you can find daily and weekly content such as game recaps, team news, Players of the Week, conference and section standings, past and present statistics and much more.
You will also continue to find weekly recaps right here in the Cold Spring Record every week once the season officially kicks off.
