Salt Lake Community College’s baseball team has kicked off their 2024 season with a hot start, and they’re hungry for more after the program’s first-ever trip to the Junior College (JUCO) World Series last May.
Head Coach DG Nelson, the program’s skipper for the last 21 seasons, said it was a great feeling to be able to make the World Series for the first time, but he added that he didn’t like how they couldn’t get the job done.
A 9-8 loss against Wabash Valley College sent the Bruins to the losers bracket in the 2023 tournament, and a 16-4 loss against Johnson County Community College cemented their exit. However, this didn’t shake the spirit of Nelson, who said that players and coaches alike are now even more driven to get back to work and improve on last year’s stellar season.
The Bruins already have a 27-3 record in the 2024 season and are currently the No. 8-ranked junior college in the country as of March 25. “[We’ve] had a really good start,” Nelson commented. “But we’re not playing great baseball yet.”
There’s still plenty of time left in the season for the Bruins to grow and build upon this start. Staff say SLCC has excelled at player development, one important facet of success at the JUCO level that they will continue to focus on.
“The challenge of junior college or community college is that you only get [players] for two years,” said SLCC Athletics Director Kevin Dustin. “So, player development is huge.”
Dustin and Nelson believe that the team’s experience at last year’s World Series has already prepared them to handle another championship bout. “It’s like anything else in life,” Dustin said. “You have to go through it once to even get the cadence of it.”
Nelson stated that he and his coaching staff will be better prepared to keep the players more focused during the impending craziness of this year’s World Series. The 2024 season is still young, but because the Bruins now have a taste of what it’s like to be at the top, the motivation of everyone in the program has only grown.
“Once you’ve been there, it really whets your appetite,” said Dustin. “You kind of say, ‘We have a place here, and we deserve to be here.’”
