It’s easy to say that Bakersfield College athletics was headed for a down year when the football team had a disappointing year, but I say we’ve had a pretty good year in athletics.
Most people forget that the football team was doing pretty good until their starting quarterback Brian Burrell got injured for the season.
Even then we’ve seen some pretty incredible performances during the fall semester. BC women’s golf had an OK year, BC women’s soccer team had a pretty good season even though they missed out on the post season, cross-country had another good year and best of all volleyball made the postseason.
Sure men’s basketball struggled, but the women had a good season winning the Western State Conference and finishing undefeated at home for the first time ever.
It was just too bad they didn’t make the playoffs because of the dumb no rule on forfeited games.Otherwise, they would’ve made the playoffs and made a pretty good run in the playoffs. Fortunately, the fall sports really have done well.
Track and field is shining bright behind some really good athletes.
The swimming team has had a good year with record-breaking performance and five swimmers going to state in the final year for BC swimming coach Charlie Pike.
Also, the softball team clinched a playoff berth and the baseball team also made the playoffs.
So, don’t think we’ve had a bad year just because the “best” sports teams didn’t make the playoffs or have a disappointing season.
You’ve got to look at all the other sports and how they have done.
Even if that sport might not be the most interesting or popular in your mind it is still a successful sport, so don’t measure the success by how big you think that certain sport is.
In every sport, even though the certain team might not have made the postseason, every team had at least a couple of players that had outstanding years.
Also, most of the teams this year were loaded with freshman that contributed big to their teams, so I think that every team will be so much better next year with most of the key players returning for every key sport.
We’ve seen record-breaking performances from start to finish, so don’t discount how we’ve done this year.
Women’s golfer Malea Miller shot a school record 68; track and field athlete Chris Schwartz broke records in the 1,500 and 5,000; swimmer Matt Prasser broke the school record in the 50 freestyle.
Swimmers Josh Delarosa and Francesca Wyatt also broke records.
It would’ve been great to see football and men’s basketball make the playoffs or at least have successful seasons, but I’m not going to say that we’ve had a bad year in athletics. And this year was a good start for most of the sports since most of the teams were freshmen dominated. This year was good, but next year will be even better since they got very valuable experience.
What would make this year even better is if both the baseball and softball teams can make the State Final Four since both of the State Final Four will be here at BC.