2017 HVCC Baseball Preview
The Hudson Valley CC baseball team started their season off in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina a couple of weeks ago. The Vikings are looking to win their first Region III championship since 2008. Coach Alex Jurczynski is at the helm of a young team that is looking to capture that Region III championship. Some players that are looking to lead this team are Nick Teitter, and Andrew McCullough. The Vikings also got some nice transfers in Alex Koshgarian, Jonnie Benniefield, and Danny Coleman. “They will all play similar roles, in terms of leadership and helping us win games.” said Coach Jurczynski. The team traveled to Myrtle Beach a couple of weeks back to play in the Ripken Experience. I asked Coach Jurczynski how playing in South Carolina helped his team coming into the regular season, he said “It helped show us what we needed to improve on offensively and defensively.” Playing against higher tier teams definitely helped them especially getting a good win over an Elgin CC team. Region III is a pretty competitive region. Teams like Herkimer, Niagara,and Hudson Valley are all teams that compete at a high level. “We’ll definitely hold our own. Obviously Niagara is our biggest competition, Coach Clingersmith always puts out high quality players that compete.” There's no doubt in my mind that I think HVCC can compete with Niagara. I think Herkimer and Niagara will be their biggest competition and I believe they can surpass them. HVCC gets to play at Joseph L. Bruno Stadium home of the Tri-City Valley Cats who are the Class A Short Season affiliate of the Houston Astros. The Stadium also holds the Section 2 High School baseball Championships. I asked Coach if he thinks the stadium is a big advantage in terms of recruiting he said “The campus and programs HVCC offers its students is the best. The programs help you succeed and thrive not only academically but socially.” Before coming to HVCC Coach Jurczynski was a grad assistant at SUNY Oswego. I asked him what the biggest difference between coaching at the 4-year college level and the JUCO level were. “The biggest difference would probably be consistency. At 4-year school you pretty much see the same kids every year because you're not losing as many kids to graduation. At the JUCO level there’s a huge turnover rate, any team could be good any year.” Coach Jurczynski is absolutely right, you see teams turn around in the matter of a year. Its really amazing how competitive a team could be one year and how they could be not nearly as good the next. The Vikings have already began their season and are in action tomorrow April 9th against Herkimer CC at 12:00pm in a double header at Joe Bruno.
