BB: CCIW: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Gregory Sager]

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.

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.

[Gregory Sager]

We're another week deep into the season, and the CCIW portion of the league slate has begun. Among the three teams that entered this past weekend with winning records, Augustana burnished its bona-fides this past weekend down in Florida, winning two of three while continuing to demonstrate that its pitching is for real. Millikin, on the other hand, got exposed a bit in terms of its gaudy team piching stats, as the Big Blue split a doubleheader against Wheaton at Lee Pfund Stadium in which MU gave up 18 runs (nine in each game), all but one of them earned, and the league's pre-eminent pitching star coming into this weekend, the Big Blue's Caleb Akins, got hit hard by Wheaton bats and took his first loss of the year. I'm sure that Millikin is still a very good team that will probably be in the CCIW race, but it also seems clear that the Big Blue's rather lightweight non-conference competition has been distorting their numbers.

The third CCIW team with a winning overall record as of last Thursday, North Park, had a very good weekend. The Vikings exclusively played CCIW games, opening the league slate at Holmgren on Thursday with a solid 4-1 victory over preseason favorite North Central behind six shutout innings from starter Jackson Nuese. The Vikings then consolidated that good start with two wins over Carthage, a 3-1 Friday triumph in Chicago in which starter Sam Jackson threw 8.1 innings of two-hit ball and struck out 11 Firebirds, and a wild 14-11 affair in Kenosha in which NPU sophomore shortstop Taylor Joseph hit for the cycle -- I hope that Dennis Bricault steps in here at some point when he's not traveling and lets us know the last time that a Viking hit for the cyle -- and senior closer Ethan Condit picked up his third save in as many days and his fourth of the season. At 3-0 in CCIW play the Vikings are off to a great start and are clearly setting the pace.

The two CCIW preseason favorites generally had good weeks; NCC bounced back from the Thursday loss on the North Side by sweeping a three-game series against Calvin in the western suburbs Friday and Saturday and then dispatching Illinois Tech at Zimmerman yesterday by a 10-3 score. The pitching for the Cardinals looked really solid all weekend, including in the loss to North Park, and I think it's likely that we can set aside North Central's 7-8 record and conclude that Ed Mathey's team is for real, if not quite the powerhouse that the preseason votes in the D3baseball.com poll seem to imply. And Illinois Wesleyan took two of three from the other Titans from UW-Oshkosh at Horenberger Field this weekend; especially gratifying for IWU Titans fans, no doubt, is the fact that in yesterday's game IWU actually got a decent pitching performance for a change, as Marshall Ingold and Brennan Tomhave teamed up to hold UWO to two runs.

As for everybody else, Carroll had a really good weekend, pounding UW-River Falls pitching to the tune of 14-11 and 15-5 (8 innings) at Frame Park on Saturday and then taking two more, this time from Beloit, at Frame on Sunday by 6-5 and 6-3 scores, as the Pios joined Augustana, Millikin, and North Park in getting their heads above water; they're now 11-7 on the season.

Wheaton continues to be up and down; one day the Orange and Navy Blue are pitching like a contender, the next day they can't get anybody out, while the bats as well seem to come and go for Matt Husted.

Carthage is licking its wounds after the two fairly close losses to North Park. The bright side is that Brendan Roberts gave the Firebirds a really strong outing on Friday and clearly looks like a legit CCIW #1 starter, while Nate Turpin and Ryan Kosiek look like reliable bullpen arms for first-year head coach John Lequia. He has one of the top hitters in the league in Zander Tubbs, and some decent bats in Ossenfort, Ston, and Zuleger to put in front of and behind Tubbs in the three slot. I'd say that the Firebirds have a decent shot at a middle-of-the-pack finish and perhaps a fifth- or sixth-seed appearance in the CCIW tourney this spring. Nothing's for certain, though.

Elmhurst took a pounding this weekend, giving up 51 runs in four losses down in Florida this weekend. It doesn't look like there's much cause for optimism where Joe Heller's crew is concerned.

[BigPoppa]

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.

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.

[mr_b]

...a wild 14-11 affair in Kenosha in which NPU sophomore shortstop Taylor Joseph hit for the cycle -- I hope that Dennis Bricault steps in here at some point when he's not traveling and lets us know the last time that a Viking hit for the cycle...

I sent a message to SID Tyler Woolbright after the game to tell him I don't recall any Viking batter hitting for the cycle in the time that I spent traveling with the team (i.e., 1998 to 2019).  I was not at every single game during those seasons, but I did keep the scorebook for most of them. I told Tyler that the most likely candidate for hitting for the cycle would have been during the Randy Ross era, when several players in the early 1980s put up some pretty gaudy extra-base hit totals.  Unfortunately, the scorebooks of earlier seasons are long gone.

For what it's worth, two other stats I have yet to see by the Vikings are a triple play and a no-hitter.  I've seen a few one-hitters, but never a no-no.

[Gregory Sager]

I'll ask Dennis Prikkel if he remembers a Viking ever hitting for the cycle. Maybe I'll ask Randy Ross as well, as I'm sure he'd remember if he ever cycled. That's not the kind of accomplishment that a baseball player ever forgets.

John F. Kennedy was in the White House the last time that North Park threw a no-hitter. In fact, North Park wasn't even an active member of the CCIW yet when Ray Maize, Joe Mango, and Wes Nordlund teamed up to no-hit the Trojans of now-online-only Trinity International University (which back then was called Trinity College).

Long, long, long time ago.