The Goshen College baseball team boasts the biggest roster on campus, with 41 current players. Brad Stoltzfus is in his second year as head coach after spending five years in the assistant head coach position. One of Stoltzfus’ accomplishments over the past two years was to bring change to the culture within the team. 

Stoltzfus outlined his ambition for the team when he was appointed as head coach. He said, “My goal coming in, one of the major focuses for me last year, was kind of getting the Goshen college baseball culture to a good spot. We want it where, you know, we can connect with people within our campus and in the community and just build up our reputation a little bit.”

Stoltzfus also commended his players, who have taken this new culture switch in their stride. “I think the guys have done a great job representing themselves and our team by taking on leadership roles, by being engaged on campus and just overall kind of representing themselves well in the classroom, campus life and that sort of thing,” he said.

One of the biggest switches in this culture is the amount of players who now hold spots on the Goshen College Residence Life team. Trent Sillett, senior outfielder for the Leafs, has welcomed this uptake in responsibility by the team. He said, “This has been a huge shift because my age group was the first to be involved with the RA staff, and so that was pretty cool to see now, where it was just me and one other person at the start.” 

This was a sentiment that was echoed by Stoltzfus, who was a member of the team during his time at GC. He said, “Even when I was a player, we had some good teams and all, but we never had a student athlete on our team represent in that way.”

Another big initiative that has been taken up by Stoltzfus is getting the team immersed into the wider campus community. The team was scheduled to host an event in collaboration with the Black Students Union, which was cancelled due to a change in venue for their double header against Grace College. 

Stoltzfus said, “We have a handful of black student athletes on our team and we wanted to find a way to represent them, to promote the Black Student Union and the great work that they do, and to have some of that traffic come out to our games.” 

Sillett praised Stoltzfus for using his connections in the area. Sillett believes that a lot more could be done to integrate the athletics department into the campus community. He said, “I know athletics and the campus as a whole could do a better job reaching out to the community and bridging the gap between athletes and non athletes, especially on campus, so the more that we can look to do that, the more output we can get into the community I think, the athletic department will prosper.”

The team’s senior day will now take place on Friday against Huntington after being rescheduled due to weather. Originally, the game was planned for Saturday and was going to include a performance from BEE! the Band, and an outdoor lunch provided by AVI Foodsystems, but that event also had to be cancelled due to weather. 

The team nevertheless hopes that plenty of students will show up in support of senior day.