< Back | Home

From left to right: J.D. Mynhier, Nick Kurash, Brandon Hillier and John Ely. Miami's nine baseball players from Illinois have hit four homeruns while collecting 27 RBI's. The team as a whole is very close to one another.

Prairie State offers Miami players

9 Illinois baseball team members help contribute to MAC East lead

By: Kevin Jacobs

Posted: 4/27/07

The Miami University baseball team has been through its share of ups and downs this season, but one thing has remained constant - the number of players from Illinois.

There are in fact nine players, four pitchers and five position players on the RedHawks' roster who have grown up in Illinois, mostly in various Chicagoland suburbs. The nine natives from the Prairie State account for just a little more than a quarter of the team.

Head Coach Dan Simonds said this is due to the amount of talent in players from the area.

"I don't think it's so much of a coincidence," Simonds said. "We've had a lot of success in Illinois, specifically in the Chicago area."

This season, the two starting position players from Illinois, senior Brandon Hillier and junior J.D. Mynhier, have hit for a combined .311 batting average, with four homeruns and 27 runs batted in.

Pitchers - junior John Ely and freshmen Nick Kurash, Brandon Meister, and Jamaal Hollis - are a combined 6-4 with a 6.69 earned run average. What these statistics have done is help lead the team to a 20-16 overall record, and a Mid-American Conference East record of 8-5.

On the field, the 'Hawks have looked extremely cohesive, and at one point won 14 out of 16 games this season.

"Our connection on the field was a big part of the win streak," Simonds said. "And it's something that continues to grow and get better."

The only time that the geographical differences between the Illinois players and other members of the team have a tendency to flair up is inside the locker room, where the atmosphere is more lighthearted but still competitive.

According to Hillier, Ely, and senior Ohio native, Dan Leonard, the main topic of controversy is over professional sports teams.

"The only thing that separates the Chicago guys is how obnoxious we are about our sports teams," Hillier said. "We made everyone else hate Illinois with how much we've been pushing our teams. Ely and I are on the same page because we're huge White Sox fans."

Leonard noted that the only truly defined group on the team is the Bears fans.

Ely pointed out that despite rivalries between Bears and Bengals fans (with a few Browns fans amongst the crowd), the team still sticks together.

"Everyone is so close, and rooting for our sports teams is almost just acting like brothers," he said.

Before coming to Miami, Hillier and Ely played against one another in high school, but according to both, they didn't really know each other.

Now they are extremely close, along with everyone else on the team.

This family attitude and interdependence is noticed by both Simonds and Hillier, who are confident that hometowns or favorite professional sports teams don't come into play on the diamond.

"Where guys are from doesn't play into it at all on the field," Simonds said. "It's a family type atmosphere."

The team sits atop the MAC East ahead of Kent State, and is preparing to take on Bowling Green this weekend.

"On the field we're all brothers," Hillier said. "We're playing for each other. We all have the same practices, blood, sweat and tears."