After four games in Portland, Ore. against Pacific University to open the season, the Whitman baseball team headed to Los Angeles to play a three game series against the University of Redlands Bulldogs and one game against the Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens, and the results were mostly forgettable. The Blues were swept by the Bulldogs in resounding fashion, losing three games by a total run differential of 18-42. A particularly brutal two-game stretch included a 2-16 blowout on Feb. 21 followed by a walk-off 9-10 victory for the Bulldogs the following day. As a consolation, Whitman unleashed an offensive outburst on the No. 19 Sagehens in a 14-8 victory.

Senior utility player Nathan Wilson acknowledged the effect on team morale that the series against the Bulldogs had.

“Our series against Redlands was a tough one,” Wilson said in an email to The Wire. “It was honestly demoralizing getting blown out in the first two games of the series, but the third game was much closer and they barely squeaked away with the win.” 

Wilson credited Redlands’ many veteran hitters as a big factor in their dominance. The Bulldogs amassed 44 hits over the course of the series and seemed prepared to handle whatever Whitman threw at them.

For the Blues, the outcome and overall 3-5 start to the season is indicative of the team’s room for continued growth and chemistry development. Senior pitcher Russell Petersen spoke to some of these struggles.

“The general vibe has been a lot of growing pains,” Petersen said in an email to The Wire. “We are a young group trying to gel together.”

Along with youth, players pointed out other obstacles that the team has dealt with from spring training into the first stretch of the season, including weather conditions. Considering Whitman’s location in the Pacific Northwest, the Blues’ training and playing time on the diamond is limited by inclement weather conditions. Especially when matched up against teams in warmer regions like Southern California, this limitation often translates to a discrepancy in play.

In addition, nearly a full week of travel as part of an eight-game road trip caught up with the Blues despite high spirits heading into California.

“With the travel to California on Thursday [Feb. 19], we had a shortened week of practice and a lot of guys were tired and beat up physically from the previous weekend’s four-game series,” Wilson said.

Petersen explained the stakes of this leg of the road trip for Whitman as an NWC team.

“It’s always important that we play SCIAC [Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference] teams like the University of Redlands and Pomona-Pitzer as much as possible to help boost our strength of schedule,” Petersen said. “It is very rare for an NWC team to get an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament, so we have to take every opportunity we can get, even if it means missing class and being on the road for four consecutive nights.”

Despite the disappointing outcome of the trip, the Blues were encouraged by their response to the blowout in the second game of the Redlands series. That thrashing was followed by a narrow loss and an emphatic win against the 19th-ranked D-III team in the country. 

“We are a team with a lot of talent that just needs to find our identity to win games,” Petersen said. “We have had a lot of great individual performances [but also] a lot of mental mistakes that are holding us back.”

Wilson echoed this emphasis on fine-tuning the team’s mental approach to competition. 

“We are uber-talented and can truly beat any team in the country; it is just a matter of being able to consistently execute our game plan and staying mentally focused through a grueling nine innings,” Wilson said. “The mental side of the game is huge for us, in terms of having good energy, staying focused and disciplined and making adjustments.”

From Wilson’s perspective, the team’s preparation in the lead-up to games lays the foundation for its mental outlook.

“Our preparation during the week and on game days is something that we really take pride in,” Wilson said. “We like to say that we will not get outworked by any other team.”

The Blues get another chance to prove this on March 7 at home against NWC rival George Fox. In the meantime, they have two weeks off to get some much-needed rest and recovery, harness the momentum built off the end of the season-opening road trip and forget the rest.