Fall Practice Update

It is the halfway point in our fall season, so it is time to update everyone on how the team is shaping up. With the majority of the team underclassmen, you might look at our roster and deem us young and inexperienced. But after three weeks of practice, and two weekends of games, this team has started to mesh together and starting to look like a ball club that has played with each other for awhile and creating a special chemistry unlike any we have had here before. Our first weekend out, the nerves got the best of some of the rookies and veterans, and you saw some mistakes made. But this past weekend, the offense exploded for 19 runs and stole over 10 bases in two games, and the pitching staff allowed only 1 run, 5 hits, and 15 K's in two games combined. Though we moved alot of people around and changed up the lineup in the middle of each game, the defense played very well and we are starting to see how versatile our team can be. We have two weekends of games remaing to get better: Oct. 4th vs. Washburn (KS) University (DH), and Oct. 11th vs. Butler County (KS) Community College (DH).

Practice like a Shocker-Individuals

It's that time of year! The last part of August/early Sept. marks the start of our practice portion of our fall semester. We start out every year with a couple weeks of "individuals." During the fall, we are only allowed to practice a certain amount of days as a team, which equals to about a month. Before and after this time, Division 1 schools are allowed to invest only 8 hours of time to skill instruction and strength and conditioning. Only 2 hours of that time can be invested in actual skill instruction each week. Here at Wichita State, we divide that time up into 4, 30 minute session per athlete. Our individual schedule usually looks like this: Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays are offensive days, and Wednesdays are defensive days. During these sessions, we devote this time to concentrate on the fundamentals and doing the little things right. During the offensive sessions, we do alot of tee and front toss drill work. On defense, we spend the first day getting back to the fundamentals of throwing and fielding, and then we will get some repititions from the plate the last 8-10 minutes. We do this so our returners can have a refresher course and get back in the flow of things, and give our rookies a good foundation on how we do things here before fall team practice starts.