MITCHELL, S.D. – The Dakota Wesleyan University baseball team wraps up homecoming week with a scrimmage against some of the best amateur players from around the state.
The Tigers host the South Dakota Amateur All-Stars Saturday, Oct. 1, at Drake Field. The two teams will play two seven-inning games starting at 5 p.m. The game is free and open to the public.
Saturday's game marks the third scrimmage of the fall season for the Tigers. DWU played a doubleheader against Augustana College on Sept. 16 before hosting a club team from Sioux Falls on Sept. 22. In between the two games, Dakota Wesleyan hosted the Black and Blue World Series – a series of intra-squad scrimmages – between Sept. 17 and 21.
After Saturday's contest, the Tigers hold their annual alumni game on Oct. 7 before hosting the Amateur All-Stars one last time to wrap up the 2011 fall season on Oct. 14. All fall games will be played at Drake Field in Mitchell.
Dakota Wesleyan is looking to use its fall games as a time to come together and gain experience as a team before the start of the 2012 season. The Tigers finished the 2011 season 12-36 overall and 6-15 in the Great Plains Athletic Conference, and their roster featured plenty of freshmen and inexperienced underclassmen. This season, Dakota Wesleyan hopes to use the experience those athletes gained as freshmen and turn it in to wins and success in the GPAC.
Tiger head coach Steve Gust, who enters his fourth year with the program in 2012, also added several junior college recruits and transfers – including a handful of NCAA Division I, II and III transfers – to help bolster the 2012 roster.