sports season – Houghton STAR

By Caleb Welker

All statistics as of 3/6/2023

Houghton University’s Spring Athletic Season has officially begun. The Highlander Baseball, Softball, and Men’s tennis seasons have started, while the men’s and women’s track and field season transitions from indoor to outdoor. It has been a long wait for many, and the wait is finally over as last week the contests began for our spring athletes.

Houghton Baseball’s season has started with an up-and-down trip to Florida. The preparation for the season mainly consisted of indoor practices in the KPAC due to weather, but the Highlanders worked through the circumstances to prepare. When the time came for them to compete, the Highlanders seemed to start flat. Before the trip, Houghton played an impromptu game versus Pitt-Bradford, in which they lost 11-3. Then, a week later, they lost the first two games of their Florida trip. However, they eventually were able to ramp things up, putting together a three-game win streak; but after that, they lost their next four games. Despite narrowly losing their first game on the last day of the trip, the Highlanders used the momentum that they had built from a late-game surge to push past Norwich by the score of 17-6. Throughout the trip, several players stood out on both sides of the ball. Offensively, Zach Parr (‘23) and Ian Slate (‘24) led the team in batting average on the trip, collecting 22 of the Highlanders’ 90 team hits in the first eleven games. Meanwhile, Pitcher Aiden Talcott (‘26) led the team to two victories, including a seven-inning complete game against Chatham.

The Highlander Softball Team struggled during their first stretch of the season, falling short in each of their eight games in Florida. Like Baseball, most of their practices were indoors, but the softball team wasn’t able to schedule any games before their trip, so their first action was in Florida. They fought hard in each of their games against tough opponents, as their best game came against Adrian College, in which they fought hard until the very end, but unfortunately came up just short of the Bulldogs, losing 4-3. Leading the way on offense for the Highlanders was Junior Carlee Miller. Miller hit .429 with three doubles over the trip. Alisabeth Crandall (‘24) and Kayla Loomis (‘23) led the way on the mound with four strikeouts each while Jen Burrows (‘23) tacked on three strikeouts.

Men’s Tennis came out of the gates well, with a 2-3 start to their season. The Highlanders had previously battled with Allegheny in the fall, and Ithaca before February Break, falling to both of them to start the season 0-2, but they strung together two wins to open their Spring Break and lost to St. Bonaventure to close it out. Two of their first five matches were on the home courts of Houghton’s Kerr Pegula Field House, where tennis has spent most of its time practicing. When the weather cooperates, they will compete up the hill at the tennis courts near the Nielsen Center. One of the highlights of the week was the Highlanders’ impressive 9-0 rout of Wilkes University. The Highlanders blew the Colonels out of the water, not surrendering a single set. Four Highlanders, Sam Bonisteel (‘26), Nolan Zach (‘25), Marcello Garcia (‘26), and Adam Brown (‘23), had perfect sets in the win.

As the indoor track season comes to a close, the Highlanders look forward to the Spring Season. The Highlanders men’s and women’s teams combined for ten podium appearances at the Empire 8 Championship event on Feb. 24-25. These appearances include two first-place finishes. The first is from Senior Amanda Burrichter, who won the Women’s 3,000-meter championship with a time of 10:15.82. The second is from Graduate Student Malachi Yeager, who won the heptathlon with a Houghton University record of 4,464 points.

Finally, as spring sports begin, one more Houghton Winter Sport has yet to come to a close. Women’s Basketball will head to Indiana next week to compete in the National Christian College Athletic Association’s Division I National Championship tournament. They will be guaranteed three games with more information as to who they will play coming soon. ★

By Megan Brown

On Saturday, Nov. 12, Houghton University’s Cross Country team competed at the NCAA Regional Championships, with the women placing 13th and the men 17th. This marked their last cross country meet of 2022, but not all of the athletes are done competing for Houghton this academic year.

Senior Amanda Burrichter is one of many students moving directly from cross country to competing with the indoor track and field team, which has its first meet at 4:00 p.m. Friday, Dec 2 at Houghton University’s Kerr-Pegula Athletic Complex.

“It’s really exciting to get to go into indoor track, and we know we’re fit,” said Burrichter, who won an individual title at the Empire 8 Cross Country Championships this fall. “We’ve been training all through the fall, and we get to start indoor track on a high note.”

For long distance runners moving indoors, it also marks shorter distances at which they will compete. Female runners, like Burrichter, run for 6,000 meters for cross country, whereas the longest race for indoor track is 5,000 meters.

While Burrichter participates in cross country and excels, her favorite races are the 1,500 meter and the 3,000 meter.

“I’m just looking forward to running those again,” she said.

Cross country runners who are participating in indoor track and field have a week or two of rest before practicing again. This is one of the aspects Head Cross Country and Track & Field Coach Patrick Hager insists upon. Since some of his runners participate in all three seasons, the third being outdoor track and field, Hager helps his athletes have sustainable practices.

For the beginning of the indoor track season, participants only have three mandatory practices a week to ease them into it. Hager also insists that athletes go home for breaks, instead of staying on campus to train.

“We send them home because, especially for cross country and indoor and outdoor track, if you want to sustain it the whole year, you need to be able to get away mentally,” Hager said. “And we understand that. We’re a collegiate sport, but there’s a tact and an art to coaching that reads the room, for lack of a better term.”

Part of Hager’s care for his team’s athletes is logging data about performance to know which exercises and practices increase people’s performance.

“The workouts are basically the same, but the volumes are different,” he said. “So that’s, again, reading the room and understanding who you have as athletes.”

And the athletes are dedicated, especially athletes like senior Collin Nasso, who runs track and field while also majoring in biochemistry.

“I’m going into this season a lot more focused and mentally prepared,” Nasso said. “It’s my last season, and I don’t wanna have to look back at a season and have any regrets.”

Last year posed as one of Nasso’s most academically challenging yet, and while he looks forward to competing with a lighter schedule this year, he recognizes the crucial part track played for him during his junior year.

“Track, honestly is my release. It’s my refresh…” he said. “Last semester, I would have gone insane if I didn’t have track because that was my kind of release for the day, where I could just forget about school and everything that was going on and just focus on something else.”

Junior Caleb Kasper also uses running competitively as a break from school, and does so from the fall with cross country to the spring with outdoor track and field. While it is not always easy, his teammates and his desire for improvement continue to drive him forward.

“It’s a long haul, but we’re here for it, and the grind is one of the most revealing parts,” Kasper said. “If you put in the work, you’ll reap the benefits.”★