From the Dugout With Tyler Watkins

Tyler Watkins...Final Out vs FIU (Photo by Getty Images/rivals.com)

To get an inside look at what it is like to be a member of the 2011 Southeastern Louisiana University baseball team, ILB has asked senior RHP Tyler Watkins to write a weekly journal giving the Lion Nation a behind the scenes look at one of the top programs in the Southland Conference. To read all of Tyler's weekly journals you can click on his picture on the left menu.

Here is journal #3 for the 2011 season.

Well Lion fans, it’s been an exciting weekend for the Southeastern Lions baseball team. All I know is that it feels great to be back in good ol’ Hammond, U.S.A. where the only languages we need to know are English and the swamp people talk that some of our Cajun teammates use like outfielder Adam Michel and LHP Jordan Hymel. Miami was fun, but there is no place like home and playing at “The Pat”.

The Miami trip started off great with our first experience flying as a team and a few of our player’s first experience flying anywhere. Two of the three first time flyers handled it pretty well (Joe “Bear” Sparacino and Brandon Efferson), but SS Justin Boudreaux had a little tougher time. I swear I thought he was going to have a heart attack before take-off on our first flight. This worried me for a couple of reasons. For one, I didn’t want to have to do mouth to mouth to the guy; I like him, but not that much. The second and most important reason was because I knew coach would want me to start at short if Boo was hurt and I didn’t pack my cup. Boudreaux ended up toughing it out and even said later on that he didn’t mind flying THAT much anymore.

While we were there we obviously played ball and some pretty good ball at that. We came out and whipped FIU 10-2 Friday night behind great pitching performances by RHP Brandon Efferson and closer Stefan Lopez, and great hitting and defense by Johnny Pace. Oh yeah, we also stopped that streak everybody was talking about too. The second game didn’t go as well as we hoped as we were beaten 8-3. Sunday we came out ready to play and take the series, and that’s just what we did. We took advantage of some errors by FIU and hit two mammoth homeruns by Justin Boudreaux and Jeff Harkensee to put some runs on the board for the series finale and I went the distance on the mound to get us a 7-1 win.

The rest of the time we were down in Miami, we went to Dolphin Mall were Jordan Hymel was coaxed into trying every new hand lotion and nail cleaner by the people working at the kiosks in the middle of walkways. He said he couldn’t get away from them, but I just think he liked the attention the mamacitas and one muchacho were giving him.

We also ate some fantastic food while we were there too! We ate at a buffet that was to die for, literally, we were afraid if we ate the food, we would die of food poisoning. That was just one mistake on the food part though and the rest of the time we ate like kings…who love pizza…a lot.

All in all, we had a great time and played some pretty good ball. Notice I said “pretty good”, we could have done a lot better and I promise Lion Nation that we will. Finally, I want to take this time in the journal to thank all of the parents and fans that made the trip down to watch us play. We really appreciate the support you guys give us and it definitely doesn’t go unnoticed.

Until next time MANEiacs,

GO GREEN

GO GOLD

GO LIONS

Tyler Watkins #27