The Iowa Western Community College baseball team has won 17 of its last 19 games in moving into the national junior college top ten. Winning streaks are nothing new, though, for a program that finished third in the country in 2005.
Iowa Western coach Marc Rardin says the biggest thing they’ve been proud about is after they won 28 games in a row, he said it would never happen again. But he says they’ve gone on another streak and have been consistent.
His team is 27-7 after making it to the junior college world series last season. Rardin felt it would be a tough act to follow because the expectations of yourself are the toughest thing. Rardin says it was tough for the sophomores because he said he made it a point not to compare this year’s team with last year and expecting to duplicate everything.
Rardin says consistency in all phases is a must in a lengthy winning streak. He says you can’t look at the umpires, bad weather, or bad hops. He says you have to develop yourself to make the basic plays every day, and then any spectacular plays are a bonus.
Rardin says with the success the program has enjoyed they have also become a target in every game. He says that’s tough sometimes as a coach and a team, because there is no off day. The Reivers return to action on Tuesday when they open a series at Muscatine Community College.