Muskie Baseball Travels To Illinois To Take On D-I And D-III Opponents
March, 19 2004
The Lakeland College Baseball Team will travel to Illinois this weekend to take on Division I Northern Illinois in Dekalb at 12pm. The Muskies will take on the Huskies in a double header with the first game being 9 innings and the second 7 innings.

These games are expected to be played as the forecast calls for 50 degree temperatures following some overnight rain. The infield will be tarped at Ralph McKinzie Field on the Northern Illinois campus.

Lakeland (enrollment 835) just returned home from their annual spring trip to Florida with their second best start in team history at 4-6. Two Muskie teams have returned home at .500 but none have ever come back above .500.

Northern Illinois (enrollment 22,843) is currently 9-7 overall and have impressive road wins over Texas Tech, New Orleans, and a strong three-game sweep of Southern Illinois in Carbondale.

Lakeland is also set to take on Dominican University on Sunday in another double header slated for 12pm. The Muskies are hoping to get the two nine-inning games in but the forecast calls for only a high of 35 degrees.

The Muskies have a tradition of taking on Division I opponents under the direction of head coach John Weber. This will be the 9th D-I opponent Weber has played in his 6th year in hopes that the tough scheduling will pay off in the long run for Lakeland. The theory seems to have worked as the baseball program at Lakeland has won 3 straight conference titles (only 2 had been won previously in the 60+ years of the program), earned back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances and came in 5th at the 2002 Division III College World Series, making Lakeland the smallest college ever to make a CWS appearance.