The following is an entry from Western Carolina senior infielder Will Prater as he helps document the fall practice season for the Catamount baseball team as part of an internship with WCU Athletics Media Relations.
 
Cullowhee, N.C. – The fall baseball season is in full swing for the Western Carolina University baseball team and WCU is looking towards a big season this spring coming off a 28-21 overall record last year that landed them fourth in the Southern Conference. The Catamounts made a run deep into the SoCon Baseball Championship tournament before falling to the Samford Bulldogs in the title game.

Essentially beginning once the team returned to campus in August, the fall has been good to the Catamounts this season.

"We have really been focused this year on what we didn't accomplish last year, and we are excited to get back on the field and compete for another championship. That all starts in the fall with practice, intrasquad games, as well as our fall games," said senior outfielder Immanuel Wilder.

The Catamounts started their fall games against ACC powerhouse Louisville on Sunday, Sept. 26 in Marion, N.C., at the Big League Camp on Lake James. Slated for 16 combined innings, the game was competitive from the first pitch until the last. After 16 innings of play, WCU ended up winning the ball game by a final score of 8-7. WCU earned a lot of notoriety as representatives from D1Baseball.com were on-hand and earned a sneak preview of the Catamount squad which earned national recognition for the program online.

"We came out really excited to compete against someone else and we brought energy from the first pitch to the last and that was a big factor as to why we played as well as we did," said WCU senior outfielder Seth Graves on the fall game against the Cardinals.

The next bout for the Catamounts came October 1st at Childress Field / Hennon Stadium in Cullowhee against the Ontario Blue Jays, an All-Star team out of Ontario, Canada. WCU went on to win that 12-inning game with a final score of 22-4.

"It was fun to watch our guys swing it really well as well as our pitchers filling up the strike zone," said sophomore Zach Ketterman. "If we do those two things at a high level, we will be a hard team to beat."

The NCAA allows all Division I teams the chance to play two fall games a year. The game against the Ontario Blue jays was considered an international contest and does not count towards those two allotted fall dates. WCU's final fall game will be played against the Georgia Bulldogs this Sunday (Oct. 10) and will wrap up the fall competitions. The Catamounts and Bulldogs are scheduled for 16 innings of play at Foley Field in Athens, Ga., beginning at 2:00 p.m.

Western Carolina's annual Fall World Series intrasquad games are scheduled to start Tuesday, October 12 and will continue Wednesday and wrap up with game 3 on Thursday. Times for the three-game set are still TBD.