Newly-resurrected team holds first alumni game

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina -- “That first year was crazy – we almost didn’t have a team at all,” said Markley, referencing the fact that the school had to scramble to field a team in time to rejoin the CIAA conference. “But we were like a family – we kind of got to know each other off the bat.”

Over the course of that first season, Markley and his teammates fought for a position in the conference, battling a public perception that the young team didn’t have what it took to be successful while pulling off 30 wins.

“We started bonding and we started winning – people didn’t expect us to,” recalled Markley, who graduated last year. “It was probably the most fun baseball team I’ve ever been a part of.”

The team, the first WSSU baseball team in nearly 40 years, claimed the 2011 CIAA Championship and repeated that feat in 2012 and 2013 championships.

Coach Kevin Ritsche and 18 other former Rams played in the school’s first Alumni Baseball Game on Sunday at BB&T Ballpark. Head Coach Kevin Ritsche conceived the game, which pitted alumni against current players – as a means of connecting his players to the team’s recent but storied past. Ritsche, a two-time CIAA Coach of the Year, said he invited players who represented WSSU prior to the program’s end in 1973, but received no takers, leaving the Alumni Game in the hands of recent graduates.

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