Elliot Ballpark is UConn’s new home, sweet baseball home (Gavin Keefe @ the Day)

[huskymedic]

>>"It's awesome," Penders said. "It doesn't get old. I pinch myself every day. I truly come out of the portal every day to see it pop the way you see your first baseball stadium coming out of the portal and it just opens up. It's a dream come true."

"It's just gorgeous. ... From a player development standpoint, from an aesthetics standpoint, from a motivational standpoint, it's a win, win win."<<

>>Now Penders has a gem of a new ballpark to help elevate his successful program to even greater heights.

"That's our hope," Penders said. "As a coach, you're always paranoid looking over your shoulder. Now the concern and the worry is we don't want to attract the kind of entitled player that might be attracted to the bells and whistles that we now have in our clubhouse or in our training room or weight room, or a ping pong table in our locker room. We want the same blue collar ethos in our players that we've always had and a chip on their shoulders.

"So we have to do an extra bit of homework and research on all our recruits to know that that's the type of character that we're continuing to get. It's easy to fall in love with the fact that there's guys that want to commit just seeing the pictures of the place. We still have to do our due diligence to make sure they're the right fit and they know what this place is really all about."<<

 

[dbmill]

Excellent article. It might be the best thing I have read recently on how the new baseball facility is having an influence on UConn baseball.

 

[Adios]

Looks like a minor league park. Now I see how Penders got the recruits he had before. J.O. Christian Field obviously was a dump.

 

[Chin Diesel]

Looks like a minor league park. Now I see how Penders got the recruits he had before. J.O. Christian Field obviously was a dump.

A good college baseball park should be somewhere in the A to AA for infield quality, dougouts, bullpens and club house amenities.
The best college stadiums are close to AAA quality.
This is a big long term win for Uconn's baseball program.

 

[Adios]

A good college baseball park should be somewhere in the A to AA for infield quality, dougouts, bullpens and club house amenities.
The best college stadiums are close to AAA quality.
This is a big long term win for Uconn's baseball program.

We were getting hard nosed kids with that dump before. We don't need divas, like over in hockey.

 

[Palatine]

Northeast baseball players will always have a chip on their shoulder. They play in conditions that make southern or California kids opt for video games.