An experienced Normal West baseball team led by 11 seniors, hold a current record of 16-9 and 10-3 in conference play.
They are currently third in the Big 12 conference.
The Wildcats are led by Coach Chris Hawkins, who is in his 26th season as head coach, and who recently achieved his 600th win as a head coach, adding another milestone to an already hall of fame legacy for himself at Normal West High School.
With 11 out of 16 players on the team being seniors, Hawkins feels as though the team’s experience and desire to win gives them an advantage against their competition.
“[First,] we have 16 players and 11 of them [are seniors], so we’re ‘old.’ I do feel like that’s an advantage. There’s a little bit of a sense of urgency like this is ‘it.’ I think seniors care a lot, and I have a lot of guys that really care as this is it before college [and] they’re putting all their eggs in this basket.
“Secondly, this group has just been really coachable and they’ve learned from mistakes and they’re hungry to get better, and that to me, that’s an important formula for winning,” Hawkins said.
One rule that Hawkins has is that if you’re still playing on the team by your senior year, then you’re automatically a team captain, meaning that the team has 11 team captains this year.
Hawkins also stressed the importance of having multiple multi-sport athletes, as he claims multi-sport athletes are a ‘dying breed’ and having multiple multi-sport athletes gives the team an extra advantage.
The team has 4 multi-sport athletes this season in Drew and Brady Hart, Torin Delaere, and Cooper Temples, all of whom also played football in the fall.
“Maybe it’s a toughness thing, and these guys are all football players, and… the [spring] weather is tough and those [multi-sport athlete] guys are pretty mentally tough. I think it can be contagious to the rest of your team,” Hawkins added.
Aside from the senior multi-sport athlete leadership, another absolute standout for the team this season has been sophomore southpaw pitcher Chase Reinhart.
Reinhart has pitched 39.1 innings so far this season and has only given up 12 hits and 2 runs. He also has 65 strikeouts and has only given up 15 walks with his opponents batting average against him being .091 with an ERA of .458. In reality, this is about half a run per every seven innings.
Reinhart had his coming out party on April 24th, against cross town rival Normal Community Ironmen, hosting a complete shutout and looking extremely dominant against the best team in the conference with four division 1 college commits.
The turning point for Reinhart’s career actually occurred during last season against a Bradley Bourbonnais team.
During the game, Hawkins noticed Reinhart’s shoulders were slumped, and he was kicking around dirt.
Hawkins went out to the mound and asked him the question: “are you going to be a chihuahua, or a pitbull?”
Reinhart replied that he wanted to be a pit-bull and ever since then, he has completely taken off.
“Our defense has been good, but he [Reinhart] is extra extraordinary. We probably needed him to pitch more than what I wanted him to… as a freshman, but we really were short-handed, and he got some experience that freshmen don’t get.
“And because of the way he was raised…he is mentally tough, and… we’ve had a challenge against some of the best teams, and I think he’s just really grown and matured. There are some guys who would not have been able to stay in some things he went through as a freshman, but he is a really strong-minded kid, and it’s really paid dividends for him,” Hawkins mentioned.
The strong-minded attitude is something that even Reinhart recognizes as a strength of his.
“I think what separates me from my competition is just having a better mindset and just more focus and having a lot of confidence going up to the mound. I know personally that I have my bag of pitches, and if everything is working, I know that I can beat anyone I face.
I also think what has made me so good this season is just having a lot of confidence and having more of a control to myself and forgetting the bad things that go on in a game way faster than last year. Just having more ‘velo’ as well is a very big boost from last year,” Reinhart noted.
Reinhart’s success has certainly helped the Wildcats, but Hawkins and crew cannot go without giving credit to some of the senior leadership on the field.
Hawkins specifically gave some specific shout-outs to Seniors Ryder Coone and Chase Knuth.
“A core of our seniors have really grown emotionally and really matured, and I will say like a couple of standouts would be Ryder Coone. He attended all of our intramural workouts. I mean it’s not a baseball workout, just intramural strength and conditioning. Not everybody shows up to those, but he did and [he] led,” Hawkins boasted.
Coone’s presence on the field is clear, but Hawkins notes that his true leadership actually comes from his work off the field.
“You know he was willing to speak up with guys needing to push it a little bit, and it’s not always easy to be able to tell your peers to step up. Coaches do it, but sometimes to tell your teammates that are the same age as you is not easy, but Ryder is not afraid to speak up, and that’s been important,” Hawkins noted.
In addition to Coone, Knuth is another “lead-by-example” kind of player that Hawkins appreciates.
“He’s a returning first team conference performer and in the off-season, he really led by example. He doesn’t say a lot, but he really leads by example,” Hawkins said.
The Wildcats conclude their regular season on May 24th, being about 3 weeks away from postseason play.
Hawkins is confident in this group’s ability to compete with anybody and hopes to make a deep run despite having the odds stacked against them.
In fact, the Wildcats are one of the smallest schools in the class that they are in.
“We’re 3A, and we’ll need to have a game where we can throw somebody other than Chase, and then get to the championship with Chase. We’re gonna have to throw him to win our first game, and in baseball, whoever you have on the mountain is a big part of that.
Right now, I think the odds are stacked up against us, but I wouldn’t put anything past [this] team. I just feel like…they expect to win especially with the competitive leadership of all the seniors,” Hawkins added.
The Wildcats look to build on there momentum as Peoria Notre Dame tomorrow, May 7. First pitch is at 4:30 pm.
