 |
| Winston-Salem State will host the Atlantic Regionals of the Division II Baseball Championships. |
Three years ago, Winston-Salem State baseball coach Kevin Ritsche was struggling to find players for the newly reinstated program. On Sunday night, his team was selected to host the Atlantic Region of the NCAA Division II Baseball Championships
The tournament will be played at Wake Forest Baseball Park in Winston-Salem. The Rams (38-11) will have the second seed in the tournament, and will open against fifth-seeded East Stroudsburg (33-16) on Thursday. The double elimination tournament will continue through Sunday.
WSSU will participate in the regionals for the third consecutive season. Ritsche told the Winston-Salem Journal’s John Dell that this season he and his team hope to make it somewhere WSSU baseball has never been before: The College World Series.
“Our goal from the start of the season was to win the regional and get to the College World Series in Cary,” Ritsche said. “We are feeling very good about how our season went and now we just have to put it all together. We’re excited.”
While WSSU’s football program has earned the admiration of many the past few seasons, the success of the team has largely gone unnoticed outside of the CIAA. The Rams have won every CIAA baseball title since 2011, their first season after being scrapped nearly forty years earlier. Ritsche has led the team to over 100 wins in three seasons.
Win, lose or draw, WSSU’s baseball excellence is just another indicator of how the athletic department at the university has been firing on all cylinders the past few years.