Crowder Baseball Gearing up for Region 16 Tournament This Weekend

NEOSHO, MO — It’s post-season time for the Crowder Roughriders Baseball team and their post-season play kicks off on Thursday when they compete in the Region 16 Tournament.

The Roughriders kick off the Region 16 Tournament when they face off against State Fair Community College.

Crowder swept State Fair earlier in the season in their 4-game series.

The Roughriders are no strangers to success in the Region 16 Tournament, as they walked away from the Tournament last year as Region 16 Champions and Crowder returned quite a few players from that championship squad.

We caught up with the team on how experience this late in the season is really key in achieving championship level success.

Sophomore Austin Jobe said, “I mean, it’s big having people come back. Obviously, we lost a lot of good arms last year, good bats in the line up. But I mean, we had freshmen come in and take those spots right away in the fall, and it definitely transferred over to the spring. So having people come back with experience has definitely key out of the bullpen and we have a few game starters back”.

Sophomore Easton Swofford said, “You know we just sink to the level of our preparation and we treat it as a game 58-59, whatever it might be. Treat it as game one and it’s just another game that we need to take care of”.

Head Coach Travis Lallemand said, “I think experience is one of the most underrated things in baseball, so I’m glad that, you know, we were there. But it doesn’t mean anything as far as our success this year. It just might lead to some better preparation for us”.

Crowder and State Fair’s game has a start time set for 4:00 p.m. in Joplin at Joe Becker Stadium.

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