DE PERE — The De Pere Redbirds baseball team has high expectations this year, having been one win away from advancing to Fox Cities Stadium last year and the year before. Now this year they are ready to get over the hump.
“We are in the hunt,” said Easton Arendt, De Pere senior outfielder and pitcher. “I can tell you that. Getting eliminated in the section finals two or three years in a row is tough.
- Eight of nine starters return from last year’s squad, which was eliminated from the playoffs by state runner-up Hortonville.
- FRCC Player of the Year Easton Arendt returns
- For the past two seasons, the Redbirds have been one win away from advancing to the state tournament.
Eight of nine starters return from last year’s squad, which was eliminated from the playoffs by state runner-up Hortonville. Last year, the Redbirds finished in a four-way tie for the FRCC crown.
“We probably have 12 all-conference caliber players,” Redbirds head coach Bob Van Rens said. “Unfortunately, you can only have 9 players in your squad at a time. This is a great problem. absolutely.”
“We can all hit from 1 to 9, and I think that’s a very important role that a successful baseball team plays,” said senior infielder Javin Gauthier, who will play NCAA Division 1 baseball next year at Valparaiso.
The players who returned from the team that lost 22-8 came back hungry.
“I like to tell the kids to be here 15 minutes early. I got here 20 minutes early and today I was probably the thirteenth person here,” Van Rens said. “I arrived 20 minutes early and was very overdue for this group. We have a really great group of kids here.”
One of the players in this great group of kids is returning FRCC Player of the Year, Easton Arendt. He is one of many returning seniors in what Van Rens calls “the best group of seniors he’s ever had.” He shines on the mound in the outfield and at the plate. Last year, he had a .396 batting average and was 9-1 with a 2.49 ERA as a pitcher.
“He’s just a competitor,” Van Rens said of the Winona State commit. “When he’s on the hill, I wouldn’t want anyone else to be there.”
“He’s amazing,” Gauthier said. “Overall, just an amazing player. Great person. Great teammate.”
The team understands that expectations are high, considering it was ranked number one in one of the pre-season stores, but they are not thinking about the noise outside.
“We talked about it straight away and we’re not going to talk about it again,” Van Rens said. “This ranking means nothing. Everyone is 0-0. We’ll just follow the right process every day – show up, work challenging and let the pieces fall where they may.
As for how they can get over the hump and say:
“We don’t have to beat ourselves up. Every game we lost, we thought we were better than we were, but we were in our heads and just didn’t compete the way we could have competed to get over that hump.
This Thursday, the Redbirds will host Green Bay Southwest in their season-opening game.
