Scott Kretzmann
ASC Sports Information Director
After a 35-year hiatus, Adams State College will resume playing the sport of baseball, Director of Athletics Larry Mortensen announced Wednesday, that the Grizzlies, members of the NCAA (Division II) and the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, will play a partial schedule during the 2012-13 academic year and will play a full RMAC slate and be eligible for a conference title in the spring of 2014.
Baseball will be the twenty-first varsity sport that ASC will sponsor and is the seventh sport the Grizzlies have added or resumed in the last three years alone.
ASC last sponsored the sport of baseball in 1976 and enjoyed quite a bit of success winning back-to-back RMAC championships in 1973 and 1974 while posting the best overall record in the conference in each of the last four years (1973-76) while sponsoring the sport.
Nicknamed the Indians at the time, ASC was also home to several standout players including 3-time NAIA All-American and 2002 ASC Athletic Hall of Famer Randy Gettman, who went on to a professional career in the Chicago Cubs and Baltimore Orioles organizations.
“It’s exciting to bring baseball back to Adams State. We had a storied tradition of baseball prior to its elimination in 1976,” Mortensen said.
“Baseball is a popular sport in the San Luis Valley and Southern Colorado. The admissions office’s top request by prospective students is baseball. This sport will bring in a consistent source of enrollment and revenue from a diverse student-athlete pool for years to come,” he added.
He also noted that Trinidad State Junior College, Otero Junior College and Lamar Community College have successful programs and could be potential feeders for much needed upperclassmen and transfers in the early years of the program.
Mortensen expects that the addition will bring 40 new student-athletes to ASC.
“Student-athletes are just that — students first, athletes second. Baseball, which carries a large roster, will enhance the campus by putting students in seats, who both retain and graduate at a higher rate than the regular student body,” he said.
ASC Athletic Officials are exploring facility needs.
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