You could not ask for a better time to bring baseball back to the DU community.Despite the Rockies rout in the 2007 World Series, the DU Club Baseball team is gearing up for its inaugural season at DU.
In the early 1980s, DU had a Division II baseball team, but it fell apart. Now, Marissa Yandall, a graduate student of Interpersonal Family Communications at DU, is very close to putting baseball back on campus. After years of failed attempts to create a club team.
Yandall looked at the wide array of club sports offered, and decided to add a baseball team to the roster.
“There was evidence people had not been able to get it going,” Yandall said, adding that she “saw problems and thought I was the right person to move the process forward.”
Despite her confidence in forming a team. Yandall had to overcome countless hurdles in the process of creation. Obtaining approvals and scheduling conflicts were difficult to work around, but she was guided by her mother’s words, “experiences like these are lessons in futility.”
Yandall confesses, “It is frustrating that I can’t speed up the process, but patience is the key.”
She has been meeting school requirements. The team has been approved by the school as an interest group, but is still waiting on the approval of the Office of Risk Management, which should get back to her by Friday. “We can’t have tryouts until then,” said Yandall.
Depending on when, and if, she gets approval, tryouts should be during the first or second week in November. However, because a number of potential players will be traveling abroad, she will need to hold a tryout after winter break as well.
She expects players to be in training over the long winter break in order to be ready for the tryouts and intense conditioning sessions when they get back in January.
“Since freshmen and sophomores are going home, it is in their best interest to work out over break,” said Yandall.
She stresses that there will be “conditioning after break, not practice.”
When asked why she was interested in baseball, and whether or not she was a player in high school, she simply said, “I like baseball.”
She was a softball player in high school and still is a loyal Detroit Tigers fan. Living in Denver her whole life, she experienced the highs and lows of Colorado baseball, watching the Rockies start in Denver when she was 15, following its slow ascent, and seeing the team reach the World Series in 2007.
The club baseball team will be probationary for its inaugural year, with no funding. The team is seeking donations and sponsorships in the community.
Yandall said “once there is substance, there will be more people willing to donate and sponsorships to attract.” Students will begin fund raising events in earnest next year.
