Jake Owens is the starting third baseman for Northwestern University. He was named to the pre-season all-conference squad in the Big 10. Jake hails from Wisconsin.

Getting Started

I should probably start off this first blog by introducing myself.  My name is Jake Owens and I am the second baseman for the Northwestern Wildcats.  This is my fourth year starting for the team, mostly bouncing back and forth between second and third base.

This season has been an emotional rollercoaster up to this point.  Our record currently sits at 5-12, but that is in no way indicative of howwe have been playing.  Five of our losses have come by one run, and two others have come by two runs.  It’s disheartening when you are so close but can’t quite pull it out, but it also keeps the team pushing even harder to get over the hump.

We recently returned from what ended up being about a 10-day road trip.  We left on Thursday, March 20 for our spring break trip to Florida.  During that week-long trip we were able to get four games in
while having two washed out by the Florida rain.  The frustrating outcomes to the games continued as we dropped three of those games by one run.  The only thing we could do at that point was use the frustration to go after our first Big Ten opponent: Purdue.

Our flight back from spring break crossed our paths with one of the biggest superstars in the world.  While waiting in the airport terminal, we saw a massive man with bleach blonde hair and a bandana walk into the bathroom.  We only caught a quick glimpse of him so the talk started about who it was.  One player on our team, Jim Grieco, had to find out for sure.  Jim ran him down as he came out of the bathroom and gave him the greeting that you would expect to give Hulkamania: “Hello, Mr. Hogan.”  When he responded with “What’s up, brother?” we knew it was Hulk Hogan.  It’s always a good treat to catch a celebrity in the airport.

About 13 hours after we arrived home from the spring break trip, we headed off to our Big Ten opening weekend at Purdue.  Last year we ended our season with a four-game sweep of Purdue, so we knew they would be out for us.  We ran into some good pitching on Friday and dropped the opener.  That game ran our losing streak to six games.  A lot of teams would fall apart at this point in the season, but our guys showed some great character by responding with a big 11-3 win on Saturday in the first game of a doubleheader.  Although we continued to drop the final two of the series, we proved to ourselves what we are capable of by breaking the streak with that Saturday win.

Now we are looking ahead to our first home games of the season this weekend against Michigan State.  Every weekend is huge once conference starts up, so we need to have another good week of practice to get things back on the right track come Friday.

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