After taking the 2011 season off from the Metrodome, the Gustavus men’s baseball team is back playing March baseball. In the spring of 2011 the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome was under repair after 17 inches of snow caused the domed ceiling to tear.

For the past two Sundays, the Gustie men have had a sequence of doubleheaders in Minneapolis at the now repaired facility.

“We appreciated what we had once it was gone last season,” Senior Captain Taylor Fish said.

Without being able to utilize the dome in 2011, the men’s team missed six games and 21 practice days.

“Last year when we played in Arizona we were rusty,” Senior Captain Erik Sveen said.

The dome provides the team a space to take groundballs off of a surface other than the Blue in Lund Center; it allows hitters to hit live outside of a batting cage and is as close to authentic outdoor baseball as a Minnesotan can ask for in early March.

After only practicing in Lund for the beginning weeks of the season,“you become nervous of making overthrows in the space of the Metrodome,”Fish said.

“You know the nerves are coming but you don’t realize until you take the field,” First-year Chris Kelly said.

As a first-year, Kelly has immediately been trusted by the Gusties, submitting a line of 9 1/3 innings, five earned runs and five strikeouts in two starts. The Gusties in 2012 are youthful, to say the least. Of the 28 man roster, 14 of the players are first-years. Along with Kelly on Sunday, First-year Logan Peymann also contributed three innings out of the bullpen.

“We have enough veteran presence where youth will only bring a new energy,”Kelly said.

The team has already heavily relied on that veteran presence. Sveen has six hits in his first 13-plate appearances, leading off a lineup that will rely on accumulating a volume of hits opposed to power.

“We will rely on our pitching and defense, but can win games offensively also,” Fish said. “We have the deepest roster we have had in my four years, especially on the mound.”

The first two doubleheaders only brought home one win. Facing the eighth-ranked team in the nation, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, the Gusties lost 3-2 and 5-1. This past Sunday against Grandview College, the first game was a 4-3 loss and the second earned Kelly his first win of his season and career with a 7-4 Gustie win.

It took three games for the Gustavus offense to break out: “slow bats at the beginning of the year always favors the pitchers,”Sveen said. “With more plate appearances the offense should pick up.”

More experience will come on the men’s spring trip to Phoenix, Ariz.

“All we do in Arizona is hang out and play baseball. The trip prepares you for the conference schedule grind of twenty games in five weeks,”Fish said.

Almost every day of the trip, the squad will be playing doubleheaders; this will present pitchers and hitters the chance to earn opportunities to play upon returning to St. Peter.

The men have one more doubleheader at the dome this Sunday night at 5:00 p.m. against Wartburg College. Their next action will then occur when the team leaves for Phoenix on March 22. There appears to be a higher level of ability on the squad this year, surged by a youth movement and veteran leadership.

“There is no reason why we shouldn’t make the MIAC playoffs,”Kelly said.