ECU Baseball has deep focus and quality leadership heading into 2024 season
GREENVILLE, N.C. (WITN) – The Jungle is almost ready to welcome. Just a few weeks from ECU baseball season. Expectations are as high as ever for the ECU baseball team ranked as high as 11th in the preseason polls. While the coaching staff and many of the players remain the same, there is something different about this year’s team.
This group has a chance to be the best leadership group in the ten years that I have been the coach here,” says ECU head coach Cliff Godwin, “And it has been just awesome to watch those guys continue to grow and develop and the closeness of this group.”
“We have a really good junior class and then you got a guy like Danny Beal who is a senior and been here a long time,” says ECU Pitching Coach Austin Knight, “That junior class from a leadership perspective is one of the best we have had here in a quite some time.”
As coach Godwin hits the decade mark as the head baseball coach of the Pirates this spring, some assigned reading inspired their charge.
“Our motto is ‘Discipline equals freedom’ this year. We had a book to read over break. It was called Extreme Ownership. A couple of old Seals wrote it. We listened to it or read it over break,” says ECU senior pitcher Danny Beal, “We took a vote and that is what we landed on. I think it really embodies what we are about this year. The more discipline we can have the better off we are going to be.”
“It is really what makes great teams great,” says ECU second baseman Jacob Starling, “They take their discipline in things they do every single day. It frees you up when you are going out and playing games because you know you have put in all the hard work.”
The thoughts of the offseason following a 47-19 2023 season with a road regional when they had hoped to host again has them deeply focused.
“Last year we were on the verge of hosting or not hosting. We can drop back on a couple of key games that if we had won that we probably would have hosted,” says ECU outfielder and first baseman Carter Cunningham, “So you can’t take that mid-week against whoever for granted. Because we know the committee looks at RPI pretty heavily so every game matters.”
The upperclassmen have already mixed with the incoming players becoming a crew of Pirates focused on their motto and goals.
“We have just been one big unit on and off the field. I had a bunch of guys over to watch some playoff games at my place. It doesn’t matter who they are or what guy on the team they are,” says AAC Preseason Pitcher of the Year Trey Yesavage, “We are all brothers. We all have each other’s backs.”
“Having those conversations off the baseball field. Just knowing them as a person. Knowing them as a friend,” says ECU senior catcher Justin Wilcoxen, “You get a lot of information on a lot of guys and that’s how you talk to them on a baseball field.”
The young guys of the past few seasons have grown up before us. Some through struggles and injuries like Jacob Jenkins-Cowart.
