The Central College baseball team clinched its first outright Iowa Conference regular season title in 64 years on Sunday with a doubleheader sweep at Cornell. Coach Adam Stevens team won a share of the title back in 2006 but this is the program’s first outright championship since 1948.

“The Iowa Conference is just so competitive there is so much parity in the league and it’s really tough to get a conference title outright,” Stevens says. He says he is proud of the team and how hard they have worked.

Stevens says it takes a consistent effort to win a regular season title. “That was a big emphasis for us coming into this year, we were really up and down last year.”

Stevens says a big part of their success is a pitching staff that sports a 2.22 earned run average and opponents are only batting .220 on the season. The Iowa Conference Tournament begins May 10th in Cedar Rapids and Stevens wants the Dutch to approach it like they need to win the tournament to advance to the division three regionals.

“There’s 17 at-large bids in the country and there’s about 400 division three baseball teams, so they are very tough to get,” Stevens says. He says Buena Vista got a bid last year and did well and that will hopefully help the conference, but he wants to win the conference tournament and get the automatic bid.

Central is 28-9 overall.

The Des Moines Area Community College baseball team prides itself on hitting the fastball and the Bears have been doing a lot of that the past few weeks. Coach Dan Fitzgerald’s team has won 19 of its last 20 games and during that stretch is averaging better than 11 runs per game.

They started off 6-1 and then lost 7 straight on a trip down south before getting back on track. Fitzgerald’s team works year round on hitting and the focus is on catching up with the fastball.

The Bears have played in the division two junior college World Series for three straight years and the expectation level for the program is high. “I think our guys come to DMACC knowing that, we’re very up front telling them we will play with a target on our back,” Fitzgerald says.

Fitzgerald says the program has been built with players who are highly motivated and feel baseball is important too them.

The Bears return to action on Tuesday at home against Dakota County.

The Cedar Rapids Kernels will be offering much more than peanuts and Cracker Jack, tonight, when they host the Clinton LumberKings in their Midwest League home opener. General manager Doug Nelson says the team will be serving up a selection of healthy foods at Veterans Memorial Stadium.

He says they’ve teamed up with the Blue Zones initiative, which is the group that is encouraging people to make healthier decisions. Nelson says their home plate concession stand will feature salads and other healthier options along with the traditional fare of hotdogs and brats.

Nelson says they have been hearing from their fans the last few years about the desire for more healthy choices at the concession stand. “We have been slowly adding healthier foods to our stands over the last couple of years, and because of the good response we’ve gotten to those menu items, that’s why we’ve really decided to make that a focus in our home plate stand,” Nelson explains.

The Quad City River Bandits will open the new baseball season by celebrating a championship. The club is holding a parade outside of Modern Woodmen Park prior to tonight’s game against Kane County to celebrate last year’s Midwest League championship.

General manager Stefanie Brown says they will have a “Parade of Champions” which will feature the team parading in. They will give away 111 penants to honor fan Shelby Harris, who is 111, and will be throwing out the first pitch on opening night.

The club has spent the off season planning promotions in the hopes of giving fans an “experience that will make them want to come back.”

“We want to plan when they walk in that there’s an entertaining atmosphere, that there’s good food smells…that we have fun interactive entertainment,” Brown says. She says those are the things they can control and when the team does well that’s an added bonus.

The Clinton Lumberkings open the season at home against the Burlington Bees and the Cedar Rapids Kernels open on the road at Wisconsin.

Brian Drent has made a quick transition to the college baseball ranks. After spending six years as the head coach at Sioux City North High School. Drent is in his first season directing the program at Morningside. The Mustangs are 23-12 overall and off to a 3-1 start in the Great Plains Athletic Conference race.

“I really inherited a good group of kids and number one they are great to work with, and we have some very solid players,” Drent says.

Drent says one of the biggest differences between high school and college is how the pitching staff is managed late in games.

He says the 6th and 7th inning are much different for college hitters. Drent says there’s also a difference in the commitment level as the college players are there for one thing, and you don’t have to worry about them being in other sports.

Drent says a key for the Mustangs to stay in the hunt in the GPAC will be their health. He says they are not real deep and they’ve already had one guy go down with a season ending injury. Drent says the weather is important too, so they don’t have a lot of games that get backed up.

Morningside returns to action on Thursday by hosting Dordt College in a doubleheader.

The early leaders in the Iowa Conference baseball race collide in Pella on Tuesday as Central hosts Simpson in a doubleheader. Both teams are 5-1 in the league race.

Central is 15-4 overall and coach Adam Stevens says an experienced pitching staff is a big factor. He says they’ve found over the years that depth is where you win games and they have pitched well and played great defense.

Stevens says nearly the entire pitching staff is back from last year after graduating just one pitcher. Stevens says the Dutch have done a good job of manufacturing runs this season.

“They always say that speed never slumps…this weekend was a good example of that, we weren’t firing on all cylinders offensively, but we were able to steal a bunch of bases and bunt a little bit,” Steven says. He says they have only hit 3 home runs, but are able to manufacture runs in a lot of different ways.