Owls' Baseball Gets Votes in Preseason Poll
WESTFIELD, Mass. – For the fifth straight season, Westfield State University baseball received votes in the annual Collegiate Baseball NCAA Division III preseason poll.
WESTFIELD, Mass. – For the fifth straight season, Westfield State University baseball received votes in the annual Collegiate Baseball NCAA Division III preseason poll.
The poll ranks 40 teams in the preseason, this year led by California Lutheran University.
The Owls return a strong nucleus, led by former all-conference infielders Brett Dooley (Cohasset, MA) and Casey Boudreau (Shrewsbury, MA) both of whom return for a fifth-year due to the extended eligibility granted to the spring student athletes affected by the pandemic cancellations last year.
Boudreau hit .304 in limited action last year and was named as a CoSIDA Academic All-region pick in 2020.
The venerable Dooley was a first-team All-Conference pick in 2018. He was hitting .269 with a home run and five runs scored through six games a year ago.
All-Conference outfielder Nick Martin (Shrewsbury, MA) is back with the Owls after playing for the Worcester Bravehearts of the FCBL in the summer of 2020.
Junior right-hander Shane Bogli (Vernon, Conn.) should anchor the pitching staff. Bogli was 8-2 with a 2.83 ERA for the Owls in 2019. He posted a 2.40 ERA in three appearances in 2020, including a tough luck loss to then #15 Rhodes where he worked seven innings without allowing an earned run.
Led by eighth-year head coach Nathan Bashaw, Westfield finished 28-16, won the MASCAC Title, and advanced to the NCAA Regional tournament in 2019, winning a first-round game over Ithaca College. The Owls played just six games in 2020 before the worldwide pandemic shut down the collegiate seasons while Westfield was in the middle of its annual spring trip to Florida.
The Owls faced two top-20 teams in the nation last season in a year abbreviated by the COVID-19 pandemic, including Webster (Mo.), which ranks third in the nation in this season's ranking.
While there will be no spring trip this year while waiting for the pandemic conditions to subside, the Owls have put together a tentative schedule that could begin March 7 with a game against Anna Maria College at the New England Baseball Complex in Northboro, Mass.
The Owls and all MASCAC teams await final decisions on the spring sports season which will be announced by the league's Council of Presidents in February.