Thursday, January 29, 2015

Introduction to the "Road To Cary" Blog

Congratulations on stumbling upon the newest blog in the world of NCAA Division II baseball. I will be your tour guide on your excursion as we traverse the world of D-II baseball together. It is my belief that Division II baseball does not yet have the media representation that I believe it should. It may never match the attraction given to football, but the talent and competition is there and the success at the next level is there to the point where I believe the star players and complete teams deserve more recognition than they get.

With that said, a little introduction. My name is Kyle Schwerin and I worked in media relations for a couple NCAA Division II institutions in the Midwest Region for seven years, serving as the official scorer and media contact for both schools during my time there. I had the opportunity to be the official scorer at multiple Division II baseball conference tournaments, a Midwest Regional Tournament and had the distinct honor of traveling to Cary for the Division II Baseball National Finals twice, my greatest professional moments so far in my career.

Baseball is my favorite sport and Division II is my favorite level, so here I am now beginning what will hopefully be a successful Division II baseball blog. As someone who has traveled the country watching a plethora of successful Division II baseball programs, I hope to have some good insight to add as the 2015 season begins and I hope to be a resource that people can use to get some information as the season goes on.

I have a healthy respect for what the current media members of Division II baseball currently do, particularly the work of Nick Herfordt, formerly of College Baseball Lineup and now part of Perfect Game USA. I enjoy his analysis of teams in his weekly rankings and believe them to be the most accurate every year. Additionally, his work in the Division II world when it comes to recognition and beginning the Tino Martinez and Brett Tomko Awards are admirable. D2BaseballNews.com is a solid resource for information and I enjoy their composite rankings that are released each week. When it comes to polls and rankings, I will always give my respect to them in this order: Herfordt's weekly list at PG, NCBWA, ABCA, D2BaseballNews. That is not a knock on any particular poll, I just agree more with the methodology that Herfordt uses in his rankings. He is not on the extreme end of the spectrum like I believe D2BaseballNews sometimes is. If Tampa loses three of four in a week, odds are they won't fall out of the top five in any respectable ranking, and I believe Herfordt accurately reflects that. He is even keel, doesn't make overly-reactive decisions, and recognizes the relative talent of baseball in each region.

I figured I would get that all out of the way before we even begin, so everyone knows where I stand. I may begin my own bit of weekly rankings, we'll see, but right now I believe that there are enough ranking lists out there where the market is a little saturated currently and as a whole, they do a great job of painting the D-II landscape accurately.

My goal for this blog is to hopefully put up weekly posts from around the different regions and on a national landscape, point out notable accomplishments, and follow the run to the postseason.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully I will prove to be a valuable resource to the Division II baseball landscape.