Edenton, N.C. - UND baseball sophomore Jake Magner is spending his summer nearly 1,500 miles away from his home town of Grand Rapids, Minn., on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The Sioux slugger was picked to play in the Coastal Plain Amateur Baseball League and began his summer season in late May playing first base and batting clean up for the Edenton Steamers.
Read about his journey below in the second installment of a weekly summer blog that Magner will provide for Sioux fans on his experiences in a league that features wood bats and some of the top collegiate players in the nation.
Swinging on the Banks: Rain, rain go away
Last week was a mix of hot and humid sunny days and nasty thunderstorms. Monday through Wednesday, the high was in the mid 90s and the humidity had to be near 100 percent. It goes without saying that that I was happy when the cooler weather came on Thursday and Friday. However, with the cool weather came rain, and lots of it. Thursday night's game at Petersburg was rained out and so was Friday's home game against Peninsula. Our home fans did get quite a bit of entertainment, though, as they sat under the grandstand and watched our entire team do a few tarp slides in the pooring rain.
When games get rained out in the Coastal Plain League, teams make them up by playing doubleheaders, which can make for a very long day. Saturday we made up our rain-out game with Petersburg as part of a doubleheader, starting at 6 p.m. The games did not get finished until about 11:30 and we did not get back to Edenton until about 2:30 a.m. A lot of players found this to be a pretty late night, but I am used to getting home from games much later than that, having made overnight bus trips with UND.
Sunday was our day off and most of us spent the morning sleeping. A few people decided to go to the beach or even a Norfolk Tides game (Baltimore Orioles AAA team) which is only about an hour's drive. But, myself and a few others decided to spend the day on the golf course. It has been awhile since I have golfed, so I think I hit more houses then fairways, but I still had a lot of fun.
Today marks the start of a new week with three road games and three home games. We traveled to the Outer Banks on Monday and lost by a run to fall to 4-5, but we hopefully get back over .500 mark for the season with five games left to play this week.
