By Bob Fulton
Photography by Keith Boyer
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In the wake
of a wretched first season at IUP, baseball coach Jeff Ditch
realized there was but one remedy for what ailed his program.
He had to
hit the road.
Yes, Ditch put the campus in his
rearview mirror. He tossed a suitcase in his trunk, climbed behind
the wheel, and embarked on a search—not for a new job but for
players who could restore his program’s pulse.
All of Ditch’s days on the road
paid off handsomely this spring when IUP took off in a new
direction, courtesy of a dramatic U-turn. Only two years removed
from the worst season in school history, the Crimson Hawks
rebounded with one of the best. Sparked by many of the sophomores
who constituted Ditch’s first recruiting class, IUP posted a
record thirty-six wins, advanced to the Pennsylvania State
Athletic Conference playoffs for the first time since 1998, and
climbed as high as No. 24 in the NCAA Division II poll.
The Hawks went from rank to
ranked, seemingly in the blink of an eye.
“Even we look at what happened
and go ‘wow,’” said junior second baseman Ryan Mostyn,
referring to the veteran players who suffered through IUP’s
abominable 10-41 campaign in 2006. “We’ve seen both ends of the
spectrum. We were bottom of the NCAA. Then, to turn it around in
such a short period of time and become one of the top teams in the
country—compared to two years ago, that’s monumental.” There were
indications back in February that a rebirth of sorts was imminent.
The Hawks opened their 36-19 season by sweeping a four-game series
from Virginia State—IUP outscored the Trojans 43-7—and never
looked back. Ditch’s team returned from its southern spring break
sojourn with a 14-4 record and loads of confidence.
“We didn’t have a lot of success
on those trips before this year, so that was a real highlight,”
said senior third baseman Shayne Busti, who blasted a
team-high eleven home runs and knocked in sixty-one runs to set a
school record and lead the PSAC. “We played a pretty good schedule
down there against some really good North Carolina teams like
Catawba, which was ranked, and Pfeiffer, so we were pretty excited
to come away with as many wins as we did. That really set the tone
for the rest of the season.”
The Hawks kept right on winning,
often bludgeoning foes into submission. IUP scored a
conference-high 444 runs to obliterate the school record by 140
and eclipsed existing standards in several other categories,
including hits, home runs, and total bases. Sophomore right
fielder Jamie Smith led the PSAC and set a school record
for runs (65), sophomore shortstop Paul Bingham banged out
an IUP-record sixtynine hits, and sophomore catcher T.
J. Nichols paced the team in batting average (.406).
The
pitchers also excelled. Staff ace Colby Betz earned All-PSAC
West first-team honors by fashioning a 7-1 record and a teambest
2.93 ERA, and fellow sophomore Steve Mondschein finished
5-2.
Even in the midst of that
agonizing 2006 campaign, Ditch never stopped believing he could
resuscitate the IUP program, because he was convinced impact
players like Mondschein, Betz, Nichols, Bingham, and Smith
were within his grasp.
“I felt confident the whole time,
because I knew that I was capable of recruiting in Pennsylvania,”
Ditch said. “Coming here with the experience of having recruited
at Penn State [as an assistant coach] for four years, I just felt
like I kind of knew the ins and outs of the state and had some
success recruiting back when I was there. And the rest was easy.
It’s easy to recruit to IUP. It sells itself. There are a lot of
good things for the student-athlete to experience here.”
Alas, winning in baseball wasn’t
one of them, at least not in 2006. The best way to reverse the
program’s sagging fortunes was to boost the talent level, so Ditch
hit the road in pursuit of prospects. The resulting influx of
talent fueled a progression from 10-41 two years ago to 20-28 last
season to 36-19.
“It’s just a credit to Coach
Ditch’s recruiting,” said Betz. “I mean, he goes all over
the place. He’s out all the time—if he’s not at practice, he’s out
recruiting. And he’s brought in some quality players.”
Ones groomed in successful high
school programs, the type who tolerate failure on the diamond
about as well as Gordon Ramsay does in the kitchen. Defeat is no
longer an acceptable outcome.
That refuse-to-lose mentality
bore fruit in 2008, especially in the last weekend of the regular
season, when IUP’s playoff hopes hinged on a four-game series
against two time defending PSAC West champion California. The
Crimson Hawks won three of those games and swept Cal on the last
day to clinch a PSAC playoff berth. They sewed up second place in
the division with a 5-1 victory in the finale.
“Probably the best moment I’ve
ever had in baseball was that win,” Mostyn said. “On their
home field, knowing we had to win, to take two games against a
real good baseball team to make the playoffs was awesome.”
The Hawks’ season ended with an
0-2 showing in the PSAC tournament, but that hasty exit couldn’t
detract from all the wins that preceded it. Only two years after
setting a school record for losses, IUP established one for
victories. It was the kind of U-turn Jeff Ditch envisioned two
years ago when he climbed behind the wheel and headed off in
search of recruits.
The players he found were
instrumental in helping the Hawks morph from rank to ranked.
“Going from ten wins to twenty
last year to setting a school record with thirty-six
wins—everything about this season was so special,” Busti
said. “I know I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.”