Occidental’s baseball team notched a 13-10 win in a scrimmage against Biola University on Jan 27. According to co-captain Declan Sklut (senior), the team sees this match as the beginning of a comeback from their previous season, when they notched 5 wins against 30 losses.
“We were riddled by a lot of injuries last year, which definitely hurt team morale, and then there was some difficulty trying to form the team culture we wanted coming back from COVID,” Sklut said. “That was a battle for a lot of programs, and I think that as a coaching staff, as captains, as a group, we’ve done a really good job of it this year.”
Sklut said the changes made to training had less to do with practicing the sport, with a greater focus on fostering a competitive, cohesive mindset on the team in hopes of preventing a repeat of their previous season.
“After each practice, we’d have two members of the team stand up — and this was the coaching staff’s idea — they would share their baseball story, kind of the story of their career, highs and lows, what happened to them what got them here, what baseball means to them, and what’s important to them and why they show up every day,” Sklut said. “That was really cool, because you learn that everyone has a really interesting, important and beautiful story. Knowing that story and knowing why people show up and grind like this and play this game makes you a lot more understanding and more excited to come fight with them and help them live into that idea.”
According to Sklut, the team has been focusing on four core values of ‘hair on fire’, ‘winner’s mentality’, ‘be a rock’, and ‘carry water’.
“Hair on fire is playing with a lot of passion and energy sprinting out to spot on the field diving for balls and giving the extra effort. Winner’s mentality is staying confident in failure and humble and success,” Sklut said. “Carry water is a cool metaphor for leadership — that leading from the bottom up, having each other’s backs, staying late to clean up the field, putting extra work in and leading, not top down, but bottom up. Be a rock is just that emotional stability, both on the field and off, being able to stay at that neutral.”
According to Sklut, a similar strategy that the team uses are the ‘ABCs’, a mental checklist of attitude, body language, breathing, and competitive spirit. Sklut said this strategy is great for mitigating the pressure and anxiety that usually comes with being up to bat during a game.
According to assistant coach Carpenter Pagett, these ideals are reinforced with daily quotes shared at practices which the athletes must memorize and relate to the four pillars to help them keep a good attitude during games.
“Today’s quote was a Winston Churchill quote: ‘Attitude is the little thing that makes a big difference,’” Pagett said. “My reasoning for using that one today was based off carry water. It’s in a sense that our playing time is going to differentiate now, there’s going to be guys that are going to get more opportunities but making sure that we’re making a conscious effort of choosing what attitude we’re going to come to the field with every day. And for me that mindset is I get to be here every day, not I have to be here every day, right?”
Pagett said there are 12 games between the scrimmage against Biola and the conference games, giving everyone on the team chances to prove themselves on the field and get more playing time per game if they succeed.
Head coach Luke Wetmore said these exercises are important for building cohesion and discipline on the team in a post COVID-19 setting, especially with 19 new players, some of whom have just transferred to Occidental.
“A lot of our current players missed their junior or senior year of high school, or they missed their freshman year of college, or they started high school in remote [learning], and so I spent a lot of time on soft skills that were kind of missed out on,” Wetmore said. “And again, the baseball still matters but the soft skills are an important piece for us this year.”
Wetmore said Sklut and the other co-captains, Ryan Cacatian (junior) and Garrett Palme (senior), have done a wonderful job building relationships with their teammates by creating trust and accountability within the team. Sklut said he has striven to instill the four pillars into the daily lives of his teammates.
“This year, it’s probably been more, I would say, deeper,” Sklut said. “I think the practice of the quotes and the baseball stories, and just the messaging. They do a good job of speaking to these values on a baseball level… but living like that [as well], and thus playing like that, making a deeper commitment to those values and a deeper commitment to one another.”
Sklut said that as a senior, he has given a lot of thought to how he wants to co-captain the team for his last semester.
“The captains talk before and after practice, we’re the ones who really make an effort to congratulate guys and their successes, support them after their failures and get on guys and make sure we’re doing it the right way,” Sklut said. “And, you know, we’re humans, we can’t do it perfectly all the time, but I’m working to show guys as a leader, what that culture looks like.”
Occidental’s baseball team recently notched a 3-2 win and a 12-4 win against Providence Christian College Saturday Feb. 3.
Blake Nicholas contributed to The Occidental’s reporting
Contact Jacob Whitney at jwhitney@oxy.edu
