 Hello and welcome to the Dave Gage show presented by Buffalo Wildlands. I'm Greg Royce showing to Stevenson baseball coach Dave Gage. Coach, you're kind of in ups and downs, so it's the second half of the season. But last week, you finished on, you know, strongly, you won, you know, 1-4 straight and then last year was a Lebanon rally, kind of a roller coaster of emotions for you and your team the whole weekend. So just kind of take us through, like the last week in particular, the final conference series. We did play our best baseball, you know, the last week of the year, big win against Catholic and Sal's a very good baseball team. And then, you know, we had a chance this weekend and we knew that we had to win more games than Widener and took the 2 on Saturday. Awesome walk-off win in the second game, just emotionally, just a really big high. Unfortunately, Sunday we, you know, we just didn't get the job done, but, you know, I thought we played a decent brand of baseball. We didn't swing it extremely well, kid pitched as well. But we had a chance again and, you know, finished with a 500 season. So overall, it's a step, I think, in the right direction, but we got to keep getting better. Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, the record's the same, but it just feels like overall, you guys competed, you improved, you took some steps towards where you want to be as a coach and where you want the program to be. Sure. When I took over, my big thing was trying to make us a defensively minded program. So again, you know, we lost the last game 4-1. Like, that's our brand and we got to be okay that we're going to lose some games because we didn't swing it, but our ERA is down a run from last year. Our feeling percentage is up 8 points. We turned 27 double plays, which was 20 more than last year. You know, so defensively, we were a significantly better team. We have to swing it a little bit better, but I think where I want this program to go, although missing the playoffs is unacceptable, we are trending in the right direction. Yeah, sir. Like you said, pitching defense and baseball, you know, we're winning a bunch of games you know, just hard to consistently go out, maybe try to outslug the other team. And it's kind of, you still had some of those games where you had the 13-8 type games, but overall the philosophy shifted a little bit in kind of your building where you want to go. Of course, and the best thing about it is we have a freshman shortstop, another, you know, a couple of freshmen in the middle infield. On the mound, we had some guys that were young that did a good job and showed really nice spurts that is exciting about years to come. So I think this brand will pay off as a coach. You're never happy, you know, at the end of a season. Season's come to an end. But, you know, we'll look at what we can improve and we'll keep getting better for years to come. Yeah, absolutely. You know, like you talked about some of those freshmen, like you said, just a little bit of inconsistency and that's, you know, most freshman, you know, one freshman I think of that was kind of that way is, you know, he's graduated James Rusinski. His freshman year, he was kind of, you know, he showed, you know, especially when he was in the last two years, he showed flashes of that. You got to hope that you'll get that out of some of these freshmen moving forward that you'll get, you know, the fourth season as they adjust to call it baseball. Of course. That's what we're hoping. That's why, you know, we got them in some experience and opportunities that we could. But, yeah, James had a good career and you sort of saw, because he had the experience as a freshman in sophomore, because he was out there pitching in big conference games, that paid off the last two years and, you know, helped us to even get where we were. Yeah, another kid obviously like Matt Kerber is the other one that, you know, had a great career and was able to, you know, kind of took what he showed in his first year or two and kind of, you know, put that over a full season moving forward. Yeah, Mr. Consistent, I think he hit the same every single year or right around it. And, you know, and again, I think he learned as just talking with him was a guy who learned from watching things over the years. And you hope that guys who played and guys who didn't play paid attention to those things this year. That's what great programs do is, you know, they take advantage of their reps rather than their plan or not. So we'll return a lot next year and we're excited about the future. Obviously, again, disappointed about this year, but we'll keep this thing moving forward. Well, Coach, you thank you as always for your time, not just today, but this season. And I look forward to next year already. Thanks, Greg. All right, for Dave Gage, I'm Greg Royce. This has been the Dave Gage Show.