With fall baseball coming to an end for Kirkwood Community College, it’s time for the annual Kirkwood Alumni Baseball game.
This year’s game, held on Oct. 8, featured some of the newer Eagles playing on the team for this upcoming season while also being a homecoming game for some of the Eagles who have moved on to play elsewhere.
The Kirkwood baseball coaching staff, including Head Coach Todd Rima and the assistant coaching staff came up with the idea of hosting an exhibition baseball game between current players and alumni.
This year’s game featured some notable alumni including Caleb Fuller who plays at the University of Oakland,Taylor Jackson who played at the University of Illinois, Reece Bueter, Cade Moss and Casey Day who all played for the University of Iowa, and Levi Usher who was drafted in the 10th round of the 2022 MLB draft and Currently plays in the Kansas City Royals organization.
This year’s game was a great chance for some of the Eagles players to face some better competition then they would see in games playing alumni that transferred from Kirkwood to play at some bigger universities while also having a fun time playing.
Freshman pitcher Josh Loren said, “The game was fun for all of us to play. We faced some alumni that were some very tough competition and we really did well and used this chance to get better as players and to hopefully improve team chemistry and ourselves as a team.”
The game itself was a low scoring affair only finishing with a score of 2-1 but the competitiveness was definitely there for both teams.
The game was held at Kirkwood’s baseball diamond. Rima and the 2023-2024 Eagles players were the home team. The visiting team, consisted of 24 alumni players and was led by retired Head Baseball Coach John M. Lewis, who coached the Eagles from 1979-2011.
After seven innings of jeers, ribbing and a lot of fun the alumni walked way with the win 2-1.
Loren said, “The weather and the game was great. It definitely turned out to be a great outing and I can’t wait for next year to have some of my sophomore teammates back to play.”
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Categories: Sports
