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The Marshall baseball team accomplished a lot in its 2023 season. It finished the season with a 15-5 record and beat some top-tier competition, including a streak in which it won 11 of 12 games. While the Tigers' season didn't end with a section championship, the team proved that it was able to compete with the best.
With the end of the season, however, comes the departure of a large group of impactful seniors. Andrew Wallen, Lincoln Graven, Parker Schmitt, Tyler Maeyaert, Gavin Peterson, Jon Gruhot, Ezra Maurice, Zach Leibfried and Ashton Rowe all graduated, leaving marking a change of the guard for Tiger baseball.
"It's a pretty bittersweet feeling because we're a pretty tight-knit group," Schmitt said. "We've been playing together since we started baseball, pretty much. It's a hard way to end a good season that we had and the last game that we all played together."
One of the things that made the group special was its pitching depth. Good pitching is hard to come by in high school, with many schools having one or fewer talented pitchers. Marshall was lucky enough to have three in one class with Schmitt, Maeyaert and Rowe.
Schmitt led the team with a 1.21 earned run averaged and held opposing teams to 1.12 walks and hits per inning over 52 innings pitched in his senior season. He also struck out 60 batters.
Rowe and Maeyaert also posted great numbers, with Rowe putting together a 3.16 ERA over 24 1/3 innings and Maeyaert posting a 3.85 ERA over 23 2/3. Maeyaert also was the team's leadoff batter, putting together a .361 average on the season.
"It really helps when you've got that kind of depth because everyone around you just pushes you to be better," Maeyaert said. "If you're not on your game that day, we have another guy behind you playing really good defense... it really helps having that much depth because if one guy's off, the next guy's up."
In the Tigers' 17 regular-season games, they only had one loss in which they allowed more than three runs, a 7-2 loss in the second game of the season against eventual section champions New Prague.
Even when the Tigers had an off day defensively, the offense came right back with timely hits. When Marshall found itself in close games, they'd always have a batter that would be able to come up with a clutch hit. Gruhot had a go-ahead two-run double to give the Tigers a ninth-inning win over New Ulm on May 9 and, two days later, Lincoln Graven had a walk-off two-run home run over Legion Field's left-field wall to beat Mankato West 4-3. The team was nothing if not clutch.
"This is a team that's been relying on each other since we started playing baseball. I think it's just a thing where we can trust one another when we get in tight spots to be able to just put the ball in play and be able to get that extra run across to make or break the game," Schmitt said. "Watching Graven hit that bomb was a feeling that we haven't probably had... it was a wonderful game."
Culture is key to a winning team, and experiencing success early on changed the way this group of seniors approaches the game.
"Since we've had success in the past, that really helps us going along with our confidence. We always knew the whole season that if one guy wasn't going to step up, the next guy had it and we had that depth all the way through the lineup," Wallen said. "If one guy wasn't swinging it well, the next guy would be. If one guy wasn't playing defense at the highest level, the other guy was there for him. We just had everybody's backs with confidence, everyone could play one through nine."
Leibfried was among the key pieces of the Marshall defense. Holding things down at shortstop, Leibfried was consistently able to make some quick reactions to hard-hit balls that saved the team some runs. He also made some key contributions at the plate with 14 RBIs, second on the team behind Graven's 22.
Wallen and Graven made up a dynamic duo of sluggers in the heart of the lineup. Wallen led the team with a .436 batting average while Graven's three home runs propelled him to a team-best 1.136 on-base-plus-slugging percentage.
"One of many reasons why we were successful was because of our work ethic," Graven said, speaking on the team as a whole. "Everyone worked hard and went to work at every single practice. Everyone was very positive and nobody was selfish. Everyone picked everyone up through the ups and downs. Our team chemistry is a big reason for our success, but at the end of the day, this team was bigger than baseball. The relationships we built will last a lifetime."
While the relationships will last beyond baseball, many of them will continue through baseball at the amateur level. Graven plays for the Hadley Buttermakers, Schmitt plays for the Milroy Yankees, Maeyaert for the Irish and Gruhot for the Marshall A's. While they may not be competing together, they're far from seeing the last of each other on the diamond.
"Being on the same team for however many years and then eventually, when you get to the amateur level, you get to play against each other," Maurice said. "It's a fun experience different from being on the same team."
"I think it's great because if you're not on the same team as these nine guys, you still get to see them around because you play pretty much the same teams and they're usually out on a team somewhere," Schmitt said.
As tight-knit as this group of seniors was, they made sure to extend that communal aspect of the sport toward the underclassmen as well. As much as coaching is key to success, seniors have a responsibility to help nurture the development of younger players too.
"Just knowing the younger kids are looking up to you and they're watching what you do, so you make sure you do things the right way," Peterson said. "You do things the way the coaches want it because those younger kids are going to follow in your footsteps. The coaches want the success that we have for the kids that are younger than us."
Maeyaert will be playing college ball for Sioux Falls while Wallen is considering playing at Gustavus Adolphus College. Graven will be attending Georgia Southern and sticking to amateur baseball. Schmitt will be working for a landscaping company out of Marshall while Maurice will be working out of a welding shop in Tracy.