Lansing Community College baseball returns to NJCAA World Series with 'business to finish'
In the moments after Lansing Community College’s baseball team had beaten its in-state nemesis, Kellogg Community College, 16-8, for the regional championship on Sunday — after they piled onto each other in celebration, after the hugs with family and friends, a chorus grew from LCC’s players:
“We’re not done. This was not our goal,” Stars coach Steven Cutter kept hearing. “We’re happy for it. But we’ve got business to finish.”
The business continues this week at the NJCAA Division II World Series in Enid, Oklahoma, where LCC (47-10) is the No. 2 seed — announced Tuesday — which comes with a first-round bye, meaning the Stars begin play Sunday. The No. 4-ranked Stars are the second-highest ranked team remaining, behind only top-seed Heartland Community College from Normal, Illinois. The teams ranked Nos. 1, 3, 5 and 6 (including sixth-ranked Kellogg) fell in their respective regionals.
This is LCC’s second straight World Series appearance. It’s a group that learned a ton a year ago and approached this season with goals beyond just getting back to Enid. They’ll begin the 996-mile bus ride on Wednesday, stopping overnight in Missouri.
“We've been preaching to the team all year to enjoy the ride,” Cutter quipped.
It continues for this team because of how it responded against Kellogg, which emerged from the loser’s bracket and needed to beat LCC twice over the weekend in Jackson to advance. Kellogg did so Saturday, 15-7, meaning everything was on the line Sunday.
The Stars fell behind 7-3 after four innings and still trailed 8-5 after five, before trying the game with a three-run sixth. Then, in the eighth, LCC’s offense exploded for eight runs.
“That's another one of those moments where adversity hits a team and it's not so much about what happens to them, but how they respond to it,” Cutter said. “You heard a lot of the stuff that our coaching staff preaches coming out of the kids’ lips. … They weren't afraid of being down. They knew we had some good arms in the bullpen and our bats are top one or two in the country in offense. So we knew we were going to score. … And in the eighth, we just had one of those wild moments of an ending and we scored eight runs. It was just electric.”
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Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Lansing Community College baseball heads back to NJCAA World Series
