Northwestern State University’s baseball team ended its 2024 season with an overall score of 22-33. While the team may not have done as well as they anticipated, they are eager to take what they’ve learned from this past season and use it to improve themselves for next year.

The team welcomed several new faces, including players and coaches. With the majority of the team consisting of first-year players, the team found it hard to find their footing at the beginning of the season.

Reese Lipoma is pursuing a master’s degree in public health and plays centerfield for NSU’s baseball team. “Everything was so new. New coaching staff, whole new team pretty much,” Lipoma said. “We went through a lot of ups and downs early on because I feel like we weren’t comfortable. Once we got comfortable, we hit our stride and finished fourth in a competitive conference.”

Lipoma is looking forward to growing even more with the team over the next season as Head Coach Chris Bertrand encourages team bonding. “I feel like we grew a lot last year, not only as a team, but as a family. I feel like that’s really how this environment is and that’s going to carry over into next year,” Lipoma said. “Having most of the same guys back and a tight-knit group is going to help us.”

Lipoma’s favorite memory from last season was winning the series against Troy early on in the year. “We were at a rough stretch at the beginning with not really knowing who we were as a team,” Lipoma said. “That weekend was in the middle of all of it and gave us hope and showed us who we could be.”

Balin Valentine is a senior liberal arts major who plays left field for the team. Valentine’s favorite moment from the past season was playing against Nicholls and winning two of the three games. “That was a good one for us and it was towards the beginning of the conference. Like Reese [Lipoma] said, we didn’t have a super terrific start and this was a nice conference series win to get us going,” Valentine said.

Chase Prestwich is a senior business administration major and a pitcher on the team. Prestwich’s favorite memory from the past season was the Friday night game against Nicholls. “Nicholls had won the conference the previous year. We were playing at Nicholls and they had a pretty good crowd. Balin Valentine actually ended up hitting a home run at the end of the 10th and the dugout was going crazy!” Prestwich said.

The baseball team is looking forward to a successful 2025 season, given all they’ve learned from the past one. “We don’t have a ton of turnover like we did last year with the players,” Prestwich said. “I’m looking forward to everyone learning from last year and using that to our advantage this coming year.”