Bryan Stanley's Baseball Student-Athlete Blog #2

Hey SLIAC fans! Once again I had a busy week with games, work and school. We had to make-up two games this week with North Park on Monday. We pulled off two great wins 2-1 and 2-0 against a pitcher who will end up getting drafted this year.

Along with those make-up games, Tuesday nights are tough. Not only do I have class during the day, but we have practice right after. After practice I have to immediately drive over to school to take the one class I need to graduate this year. The only problem with this class is it’s a four hour night class that only meets on Tuesday nights for eight weeks. These types of classes can be very challenging because there is no room for error. If you miss a class, do badly on a test or do badly on a paper, your grade can be affected. I have already missed one of those classes this semester, so I am behind and trying to catch up. This causes a lot of stress because I want to do the best I can in everything I do and being behind I have to find time in between baseball and work to make up what I missed.

One of the nights I always look forward to is Thursday. Every Thursday, Webster has a bowling league for the whole school where we all meet up and bowl against other classmates at Crestwood Bowl. This is a good time to bond with your fellow teammates and also have a little competitive trash talking. My team consists of our senior catcher John Combs, senior pitcher John DuHadway, sophomore pitcher Pat Amrhein and junior outfielder Paul Kienker. We all are pretty decent, but we all just do it for fun. This week we ended up losing to a team who started off with a 213 pin handicap on us. So we ended up losing all three games. Hopefully next Thursday will bring us better luck.

This weekend we started off our conference season at Eureka College. Road trips are always fun figuring you get to play and hang out with your teammates at the hotel. This weekend was also extra special for me since my parents, my older sister and her husband came down to watch me play. Being five hours away from home, it is very hard for my family to see me play. Thankfully Eureka is half way between my hometown and school. We ended up winning the double header but left early Sunday morning due to a rainout. All in all it was a great weekend full of baseball, family and bonding.

Thanks SLIAC fans for following once again and hope you follow again next week.

-Bryan Stanley
(about Bryan)