Pierce College: Raider Baseball Captures Division Championship

For the first time in program history, Raider baseball has won the western division title in the Northwest Athletic Association for Community Colleges.

The Raiders completed their record-setting season May 16 with a league record of 20-4, and an overall record of 31-7. Both win totals are single season records for Pierce baseball, as are the league and overall winning percentages. The Raiders dominance of the west included season sweeps of Centralia, Clark, Grays Harbor, and Tacoma, and series splits against Green River and Lower Columbia.

"Second year Head Coach Mike Nadeau and his staff have put Raider baseball on the map in the baseball world," said Athletic Director Duncan Stevenson. The Raiders were ranked as high as third in the NWAACC Coaches Poll during the 2011 campaign, finishing fifth in the final poll May 9.  The team is currently ranked fifteenth in the ABCA Pacific Division Association Poll, which ranks all community and junior college baseball programs on the West Coast.

Dating back to the team’s 1975 inaugural season, the program has experienced limited success. The 1985 team qualified for the NWAACC tournament, but it was another 23 years before a second Raider team qualified.

"The 2008 Raiders didn’t win the championship, but they did send a message to the rest of the NWAACC that the status of Raider baseball was changing, and the team was becoming a force to be reckoned with," added Stevenson.

The Raiders enter the NWAACC tournament as the number one seed from the West, and will open play against the second-seeded team, Columbia Basin College, at 12:35 p.m. Thursday at Lower Columbia College in Longview.