The rumble of thunder and bursts of lightning over Eck Stadium on Saturday did not stop Wichita State’s baseball team from playing the seventh game of the Fall World Series. The series was tied at three games each, and as any good competitor would do, the rain-soaked players urged for the game to go on—a winner needed to be decided.

“We were battling rain and it would stop and then start again, but we wanted to get that game in because the series was tied so we wanted to figure out who would win the series,” pitcher TJ McGreevy said. “There’s a lot of pride that goes in to it; you don’t want to be the ones that lose.”

A lot was riding on this game. The losing team would have to cook and serve dinner to the winning team next weekend, as well as perform field maintenance for about a month. This was in the mind of the Black team as it came away with the 12-9 win over the Gold team.

But pride wasn’t the only result of the series—the WSU players and coaches gained an opportunity to learn about its strengths and weaknesses. It seemed more strengths were found than weaknesses.

“I think we found out that we’re going to be able to hit the ball pretty good this year, and we had a bunch of pitchers step up and I think we’re going to be an experienced team which will help us a lot,” McGreevy said. “I think there are a lot of positives that came out of it.”

Consistency was a problem for the Shockers last season, who would win some tough games, but lose some easier games.

Senior Johnny Coy said this team’s experience will help eliminate inconsistency.

“I think we have a pretty good group of guys that are still young but experienced. We mix a lot of younger guys with older guys,” Coy said. “We had guys that started last year that didn’t have a lot of experience, but now they do.”

Freshmen Tanner Kirk and Tanner Dearman proved their worth through the series according to Coy, while McGreevy was impressed with junior pitcher Aaron LaBrie’s improvements.

“I feel like we’re really competitive at every position,” Coy said. “We have a lot of guys that are ready to play right away and the competition is pretty tough at each position with every player, that is something positive coming out of the fall.”