Cougars Baseball Team Looking for Better 2011 Season With New Coach

Al Iversen has a large task ahead of him this spring, but he’s going to have a ton a fun doing it. The first-year coach at Lakeville South is hoping to put a winning brand of baseball on the field, and he wants to do it quickly. The Cougars are coming off a 10-11 season in 2010 that included a 5-10 mark in the former Lake Conference.

“We’re getting ready for the season just like everbody else,” Iversen said. “It’s tough to project anything when you’re taking grounders off a gym floor, but we’re looking to see who will step up this season.”

Lakeville South Baseball

2010 record: 10-11
Conference record: 5-10
Section 3AAA Playoffs: First round elimination

Key Losses

The good news for the Cougars: Iversen didn’t lose a ton of skilled players at skill positions to graduation. He has a good chunk of his pitching staff in tact, and several of his top offensive players from last year are back. The team did lose Grant Mitchel, who batted .315 with seven RBI and scored 11 runs. He also had a .407 slugging percentage. Dan Noehring hit .232 with nine RBI and scored 10 runs. The team’s biggest loss on offense comes in Joe Zander, who hit .308 with nine RBI and scored 10 runs. He also had three doubles and two triples.

Key Returners

If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that Lakeville South has plenty of returning talent. One of the Cougars’ top returning players is junior Will Lundquist, who very well could be the ace of the pitching staff this season. Iversen said he also has two other pitchers back with varsity experience. He also has his battery mate back in senior catcher Alex Continenza. The cather hit a modest .259, but had a .352 slugging percentage and a .420 on base percentage. He also had nine RBI and scored four runs. Ben Adelmann and Derek Buermann are other senior pitchers along with Nate Gelle and Matt Heilman. The Cougars have a total of 12 seniors, so experience should be on their side for the 2011 season. “We’re going to have to work on the little things if we want to win every day,” Iversen said. “We’re going to face a lot of really good teams this year, so we have to be on our game every single day to give ourselves a chance.”

Conference Outlook

Iversen summed up this year’s new South Suburban Conference pretty much perfectly with a simple sentence: “We tend to kick the snot out of each other in the regular season and see who is still standing in the playoffs.” With Eden Prairie, Chaska and Chanhassen out and Prior Lake in, this year’s conference looks to be just as competitive as the Lake Conference used to be. Iversen said it will come down to pitching, defense and timely hitting for the Cougars to have a successful season.