ENID, Okla. — A trip to the national tournament used to be a carrot dangled in front of the Southeastern Community College baseball team, something the team strove for yet seldom achieved.
Now, it has become an annual event for the Blackhawks.
For the third straight year, SCC will make the nine-hour sojourn to David Allen Memorial Ballpark to play in the NJCAA Division II World Series.
Sixth-ranked SCC (48-13) will play 22nd-ranked Kellogg (38-13) in a first-round game at 10 a.m. Saturday. The winner will advance to play second-ranked Pearl River at 1 p.m. Sunday.
The Blackhawks hope the third time is a charm.
“It’s been a fun week. We had a good idea we might get selected, but we lost a heartbreaker in the regional final, so you just never know for sure,” SCC coach Justin Schulte said. “This is a good, resilient group of kids. We had our best regular season ever. To win the conference as handily as we did was pretty impressive, especially with all the injuries we have dealt with.”
SCC received an at-large bid to the tournament, learning its fate Tuesday afternoon.
SCC’s destiny was left in the hands of the selection committee after the Blackhawks dropped a 9-8, 10-inning game to Iowa Central in the championship game of the Region XI Tournament on May 11 at Merchants Park in Carroll.
The Blackhawks had to wait nine days to find out if their season would continue.
‘We were ranked third in the nation before the regional tournament. It’s hard to get that spot, especially with all the southern schools that are really good,” Schulte said. “We played a challenging schedule. We put in a lot of miles to go to Mississippi to play some really good baseball teams early in the season to learn how good we are. It was good for our players to see team that play at a high level like that.”
SCC went 29-4 in the Iowa Community College Athletic Conference before falling to Iowa Central. The Tritons won the district title, sweeping Dakota County Technical College in two games. That helped SCC’s case to make the 12-team, double-elimination tournament.
The fact that the Blackhawks played in the national tournament the last two years and finished as the runner-up two years ago also helped their cause.
“There are a lot of factors that go into it,” Schulte said. “We had that magical run in 2023 and got second and we lost two close games last year. All of that factors in.”
SCC comes into the tournament with a.327 batting average and is averaging a robust 10.6 runs per game. The Blackhawks have 148 doubles, 17 triples and 70 home runs and a 5.45 staff earned-run average. SCC had a team fielding percentage of 97.9.
SCC did all the work to get back to David Allen Memorial Ballpark.
Now, they hope to show they belong.
It all starts with Kellogg, a team making its 10th trip to the World Series.
“They are a well-coached, very good team,” Schulte said of Kellogg. “They have won 13 games in a row. It will be a challenge, for sure. But I told the guys we can’t look ahead. We have to focus on that first game. Kellogg is a really good team. We’re looking forward to the challenge.”
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