What does a baseball program do when it doesn’t have a baseball field to play on? Well, if you are the Principia Panthers, you not only overcome adversity, but you take it on the road and triple your win total from the previous season.
As construction continued on the new Marston Family Field, the Upper School baseball program (varsity and junior varsity) concluded a successful season and nearly doubled in size from last year. Having 30 players allowed the program to reintroduce a junior varsity team.
The teams put a strong emphasis on “lifting each other up, rooted in and guided by Psalms 37:37: ‘Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace.’”
The varsity team tripled its win total from the previous season. In Districts, the varsity team won its first playoff game with a stand-out performance from pitcher Micah Worley (a junior) who was 4-1 for the season with a 1.54 earned-run average (ERA)—one of the best ERAs in the St. Louis region. Micah also had one of the highest strikeout-to-walk ratios and was named to the First Team All-Conference for his outstanding season—racking up 55 strikeouts and only 11 walks.
The second playoff game was against the No. 1 seed Crystal City, who edged the Panthers out of the playoffs by one run in a thrilling 7–6 game.
“Coach Paciorek was hard at work trying to make the baseball program better without a field,” wrote team member Cole Christensen in a recent Canfield Standard article for the Boys’ Dorm. “Thinking outside the box, or rather ‘off campus,’ he was able to rent out a field in Chesterfield for our use every Wednesday. This really helped the team learn what it’s like to play on an actual field while ours was under construction.”
In addition to Coach Paciorek, the baseball coaching staff was rounded out with four coaches who are Principia alumni—Steve Stock (US‘89, C‘94), Kenny Dow (US’93), Kyle Johnson (C’08), and Tucker Fendon (C’06). Daxton Miller, who is a stellar 30-year Special Olympics athlete, also served as a valuable member of the coaching staff. Coach Paciorek comes from a family with strong baseball stats. Ten members of his family have played professionally for Major League Baseball organizations.
Cole expressed great gratitude for the team being able “to get outside and play some actual
baseball again” after last year’s season came to a halt because of the pandemic. “I was sure this year’s baseball team would do great things with Coach Paciorek and his dedicated coaching staff guiding us,” Cole wrote, “and I wasn’t disappointed.”