Baseball to Begin 2023 Season in Sunshine State

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio. – The Mount Vernon Nazarene University baseball team is getting ready to kick off their season this week as the team travels to Florida for their Spring Break trip, where they will play nine games across 8 days. The team will be playing games in the cities of Leesburg and Auburndale.

The Cougars kick off their season with four Crossroads League games against Bethel University in two days. The Cougars will play the Pilots in a doubleheader on Tuesday, February 28 and play will play Bethel in another doubleheader on Wednesday, March 1.

The Cougars had a great 2022 season as they went 39-19 overall and 27-9 in Crossroads League play and were Crossroads League regular season champions. They made a good run in the Crossroads League Tournament and made it to the NAIA National Tournament Opening Round where they went 2-2.

Coach Keith Veale has only one senior on his roster this year in the form of transfer pitcher Sam LoPiccolo. The team lost the core of last year's starting lineup—Jake Glover, Andrew Miller, Toby Walker, and Devin Pearl—due to graduation, so the team will be looking for new players to step in and fill the batting void.

MVNU returns a decent amount of its pitching staff, headlined by preseason All-American Cruz McFadden. In just two seasons of work on the mound so far for the Cougars, McFadden holds the program record for all-time career saves with 26. McFadden's 15 saves for MVNU last spring led the entire NAIA. McFadden had an ERA of just 2.81 in 2022.

Josh Pettit and his 3.81 ERA in 2022 makes a return to the mound in 2023, as well as Jarin Bertke who had a superb freshman season in which he went 7-1 with a 3.28 ERA. Logan Fox also returns after missing the last half of 2022 with an injury. Before going down, Fox was dominant, posting a 5-1 record and an ERA of just 2.20.

The Cougars open their season on Tuesday morning at 10:00am in the first game of their doubleheader with Bethel.

Mount Vernon Nazarene University is a private, four-year, intentionally Christian teaching university for traditional age students, graduate students, and working adults. With a 327-acre main campus in Mount Vernon, Ohio, and several convenient Graduate and Professional Studies locations throughout the state, MVNU emphasizes academic excellence, spiritual growth, and service to community and church. MVNU offers an affordable education to more than 2,200 students from 31 states and 22 countries/U.S. territories.