Campbells propel Rogers State

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Campbells propel Rogers State

Sports

Wednesday, 06 June 2012 12:15

Campbell-Cody

Cody

Campbell-Colton

Colton

Former Bulldogs power NAIA squad to second place

By Ken Jackson
For the News-Gazette
Brothers Cody and Colton Campbell, St. Cloud High alums and juniors at Rogers State University in Claremore, Okla., have spent time this spring in pastoral towns like Lewiston, Idaho and Boonville, N.Y.
Those are pretty towns, but these trips have not been vacations.

The brothers are in upstate New York to play in the New York Collegiate Baseball League, a wood-bat league that features a 44-game season over eight weeks. That will seem like a picnic compared to the last two weeks.
The Campbells helped Rogers State, a Sooner Athletic Conference regional at-large qualifier, to the NAIA Region 6 championship and a place in the NAIA World Series last week in Lewiston.
The Hillcats were the No. 9 seed among 10 teams, meaning that they had to play an extra play-in game in the double elimination tournament, then fight through a week’s worth of games, half of them in the losers bracket.
Rogers State won four games – they trailed after the fifth inning in three of them – to advance to the championship game, where the Hillcats fell, 10-6, to Tennessee Wesleyan despite two doubles from Cody Campbell. He and Colton each notched an RBI in the game.
For the week, Colton drove in five runs, and Cody swatted four doubles and scored four runs.
Neither one could compare the NAIA World Series to anything they’d previously experienced, which includes time in the St. Cloud Bulldog dugout and stints at the University of West Florida and Rogers State.
“You’re playing to stay alive, every day for like a week. What can you compare to that?” Cody asked.
Said Colton: “When you’re just trying to stay alive you do whatever you can. We just got a lot of good at bats, kept those games close, and just battled back into spots where one swing could take the lead. Our conference is so tough that even in a national tournament, we always felt like we could keep ourselves in any game.”
It was a good year at the plate for the Campbells in Oklahoma. Colton hit .350 with seven home runs and 59 RBIs in 65 games. Cody hit .284 with six homers and 47 RBIs. Colton and Cody were 1-2 on the team in long balls.
And with both players having a year of eligibility left (Cody is a year older but redshirted after a knee injury at UWF), they’re already talking about next year.
“The program is fairly new, so it was a cool experience being the first team from (Rogers) to make it,” Colton said. “Now we want to get back, now that we know what it takes to get back.”
Cody already wants to make hotel reservations in Lewiston for the May 2013 edition of the World Series.
“We expect to get back next year. I have a good feeling,” he said.