Quote from: cubs on April 10, 2026, 10:13:27 AM

Quote from: BigPoppa on April 07, 2026, 08:05:54 PMThis is as painful as a season as I can remember...

BLOW. IT. UP. Definitely not a good start to the post-Augie Schmidt era...

While you're blowing it up, hire former North Park associate Head Coach Kevin Tomasiewicz away from UWO... Since he likes to recruit Illinois so much despite being right in the center of the Fox Valley region, he should feel right at home down in Kenosha. 

It comes as no surprise (at least to me) that the Fox Valley kids have been going to Whitewater and La Crosse as of late and they've been the two most successful WIAC teams.

Not a surprise to me at all.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on April 07, 2026, 11:15:49 AMEarly returns on the CCIW season thus far show a lot of balance. North Park's win over Wheaton in the western suburbs yesterday flips the lead in the standings from WC to NPU, with North Park (5-2) now a half-game ahead of Augustana (4-2) and Wheaton (5-3). But the distance between NPU and the two .500 teams tied for sixth (preseason favorites North Central and Illinois Wesleyan) is only a game and a half.

The only two teams that aren't competitive are Carthage (sorry, BP) at 1-7 and Elmhurst at 0-4. And that's my opening to gripe about the CCIW's unbalanced schedule: Wheaton gets to play three games apiece against Carthage and Elmhurst, while North Park and Augie each get to play only two games apiece against the Firebirds and the Bluejays.

This is as painful as a season as I can remember...

BLOW. IT. UP. Definitely not a good start to the post-Augie Schmidt era...

River Falls, while only a second-year program, seems directionless to me. Feels like they are chasing transfer players instead of building with HS recruits to form a solid base for their program. Great facility, 30 minutes from the Twin Cities(and it's large recruiting base) but they cannot seem to get a footing yet. Some pretty bad losses for a WIAC school to non-power programs (Carroll x 2, Macalester, giving up 22 runs vs Bethel)... team ERA over 8.00... and struggling with a very winnable non-league schedule to this point.

UWRF certainly has some players, but not nearly enough to compete in the WIAC at this point.

Quote from: cubs on March 28, 2026, 07:33:02 PMEau Claire sweeps UWO today? 

"The world turned upside down"

Quote from: cubs on March 28, 2026, 11:29:22 PM

Quote from: BigPoppa on March 23, 2026, 09:57:16 AMI am baffled at how the once-mighty Carthage program has become an also-ran. Is it the changes in the roster make-up? While Carthage is a WI school, the majority of their rosters lately have been composed of Northern Suburb kids from Chicago, and a lot fewer players from the Fox Valley Area in Wisconsin (admitting my own bias here as a Fox Valley kid). The powerhouse World Series teams of the 90s/00s were loaded with blue collar players from that area and I see very few of those on the roster anymore.

If I didn't know better, you could be describing another Wisconsin school that just got swept at home by Eau Claire (yes, the same Eau Claire squad that didn't even field a team as recently as 2020) today... The similarities are downright eery at this point!

Indeed.

Here we go... WIAC play opens this weekend. Feels like a lot of uncertainty around WIAC teams this spring... transfer portal has definitely influenced rosters. Anyone care to make some predictions?

Quote from: Gregory Sager on March 23, 2026, 11:37:05 AM

Quote from: BigPoppa on March 23, 2026, 09:57:16 AMI am baffled at how the once-mighty Carthage program has become an also-ran. Is it the changes in the roster make-up? While Carthage is a WI school, the majority of their rosters lately have been composed of Northern Suburb kids from Chicago, and a lot fewer players from the Fox Valley Area in Wisconsin (admitting my own bias here as a Fox Valley kid). The powerhouse World Series teams of the 90s/00s were loaded with blue collar players from that area and I see very few of those on the roster anymore.

Is this an intentional choice? Are they recruiting a different type of player? Is it financial? The Northern Suburbs are much wealthier than the Fox Valley and that seems to coincide with the HUGE tuition increase at Carthage in the 2010s...

UGH! Just so frustrating to watch this program struggle to even find wins at this point.

The Carthage student body, for as long as I can remember, has consisted of about one-third Wisconsin natives and two-thirds Illinoisians, with the vast majority of students from south of the Cheddar Curtain hailing from the suburbs of Chicago, especially the suburbs north or northwest of O'Hare Airport. And this has been reflected in Carthage's student-athlete population as well, as for many years most of Carthage's sports rosters have had roughly the same proportion of 1/3 Wisconsin to 2/3 Chicagoland suburbanites, give or take ten or so percentage points.

This is entirely understandable when you consider that: a) the Carthage campus is a stone's throw from the Illinois border, and from Chicagoland's northern suburbs in particular; b) the population of Wisconsin as a whole is only 6 million people, while the Chicagoland metro region as a whole has 9.5 million people, with 6.8 million of them in the suburbs and only 2.7 million of them in Chicago; c) Wisconsin is geographically vast, and large sections of the state don't have close access to an Interstate highway, whereas Chicagoland is much smaller and has a much more concentrated system of freeways, making travel to and from Kenosha infinitely quicker for Chicagolanders than it is for most residents of the Badger State; d) Carthage was located in downstate Illinois (Carthage, IL, to be precise) until 1962, so up until the last couple of decades the school's alumni base was even more heavily Illinoisian; and e) in terms of NCAA D3 schools, Wisconsin has nine state schools that are D3 members, while Illinois has zero -- and of those nine Wisconsin state schools in D3, eight are large and heavily-resourced institutions that are members of a league, the WIAC, that is a powerhouse in just about every sport sponsored by NCAA D3.

Given all that, it only makes sense that Carthage is an Illinois-centric school in terms of student population, as the school's administration wisely followed up on that logic by matching Illinois state student aid until it was no longer financially feasible to do so (I'm not exactly certain when that aid policy changed, but I'm pretty sure that it was within the last 20 to 25 years). Aid-matching or not, take a look at the rosters of the various Carthage sports today. Illinois is still the most heavily-represented state, with Wisconsin second.

You've said many times here that Fox Valley (Wisconsin) players dominated Carthage baseball rosters in the program's heyday, which is understandable if Augie Schmidt III had recruiting connections up in that area that made that possible. But recruiting connections don't last forever; high-school coaches retire or change schools, and if a critical mass couldn't be maintained in terms of having inroads with enough of the various high-school baseball programs clustered around Lake Winnebago, it likely became less worth Schmidt's while to devote so much time and effort to working that area. Likewise, as he grew older he probably delegated more and more recruiting responsibility to his assistant coaches, especially if one of them was specifically designated as "recruiting coordinator" -- and they may have focused their attentions somewhere other than Wisconsin's Fox Valley (how irritating is it that both Wisconsin and Chicagoland have a Fox River running through them, so you have to specify which state's Fox Valley you're talking about when referring to Carthage?).

I think it's possible that Carthage baseball's no longer being dominated by Fox River (Wisconsin) players has something to do with tuition increases, as you alluded. The fees for youth baseball travel teams aren't getting any cheaper, and WIAC schools are probably becoming even more and more enticing for Wisconsin families with modest household incomes who are looking to send their kids off to college to play baseball. But mostly I think it's simple demographics and location, as I outlined above, that are causing Carthage baseball to revert to the norm of the rest of the Carthage athletics department and of the school as a whole.

Thanks Greg. Your entire response makes 100% sense to me... it's just beyond frustrating as a "Redmen" alum to log in these days for what used to be:
"How much did we win by?" then to "Did we win today?" and now to "Did we get swept this weekend?"

While there have been pockets of resurgence (Like 2025's 30 win season) that offer glimmers of hope only to be followed another down season to this point.

I am baffled at how the once-mighty Carthage program has become an also-ran. Is it the changes in the roster make-up? While Carthage is a WI school, the majority of their rosters lately have been composed of Northern Suburb kids from Chicago, and a lot fewer players from the Fox Valley Area in Wisconsin (admitting my own bias here as a Fox Valley kid). The powerhouse World Series teams of the 90s/00s were loaded with blue collar players from that area and I see very few of those on the roster anymore.

Is this an intentional choice? Are they recruiting a different type of player? Is it financial? The Northern Suburbs are much wealthier than the Fox Valley and that seems to coincide with the HUGE tuition increase at Carthage in the 2010s...

UGH! Just so frustrating to watch this program struggle to even find wins at this point.

I do not hide my passion for Carthage Baseball...

BLOW IT UP!
BURN IT DOWN!

They aren't even competitive at this point. Sometimes the easy answer is not the right answer. Beyond disappointed right now.

Quote from: Gregory Sager on February 09, 2026, 04:04:41 PMCCIW preseason poll is out:

1. North Central (6)	62
2. Illinois Wesleyan (2)	57
3. Millikin (1)	49
4. Augustana	39
5. North Park	34
6. Carthage	33
7. Wheaton	22
T8. Carroll	14
T8. Elmhurst	14

Always looking forward to watching CCIW scores roll in.

CCIW 1-seed comes down to a DH today. Carthage and IWU are tied at 14-4 in league play. IWU beat Carthage yesterday so Carthage needs to win both today to earn the top seed as a split would give IWU the nod by way of the 2-1 series win. DH at IWU today.

Top six seeds gets into the CCIW tourney with a huge logjam for the 4-5-6 seeds as all teams are still alive except Elmhurst. A fun two days of scoreboard watching ahead.

(My biased hope is that Carthage gets to host the tourney in Augie Schmidt's final season as the skipper of the Big Red Machine. CCIW is looking to likely be a one-bid league this season for NCAA Regionals)

Quote from: cubs on April 07, 2025, 11:49:07 AMThrough two weeks of play, I feel like their is a significant gap from the top two teams in the league (Whitewater & La Crosse) to the third team in the league.  In addition, I don't think the gap from 3rd to 4th/5th/6th is even close to the gap from 1st & 2nd to 3rd...

National Contenders-Whitewater & La Crosse
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WIAC Tournament Qualifier-UWO
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WIAC Tournament Qualifier Contenders-Stout, River Falls, Platteville
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Missing WIAC Tournament-Stevens Point
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Struggle Bus-Eau Claire

It would be an incredible feat for UWRF to make the WIAC post-season in their first year in the WIAC. Their proximity to the Twin Cites certainly gives them access to a lot of MN players. 

Whitewater appears to be the real deal. I always feel the middle of the WIAC is still Top 25 territory, but the middle this season seems down a bit.

This seems like a baseball trip to the Hawaiian Islands could be in the future for the Vikings. Would be great for those kids to get to play in front their home state family and friends.

Well... that did NOT go as planned!