With winter sports coming to an end at New Berlin West, spring sports are gearing up for the start of their seasons. These sports include baseball, softball, boy’s golf, boy’s tennis, girl’s soccer, and track and field. Let’s take a closer look at the expectations for these upcoming seasons. 

Baseball

The New Berlin West baseball team is looking forward to the start of their 2021-22 season. Last season, the team finished with a 14-10 record. This was the first winning season for the Vikings baseball program in five years, and they are looking to carry this success into the upcoming season.

“Expectations are to be better,” said head coach, Steven Altstadt. The program is bringing back many of its “talented players” from last season and Coach Altstadt is hoping “for our record to be better and to have more success in the playoffs.” The team is hoping to achieve this success by playing more well-rounded and consistent. 

The Vikings will face some tough competition this season, including Pewaukee, who is ranked number one in the state. Other teams such as Greendale, Wisconsin Lutheran, and Pius will provide the Vikings with fierce competition within the conference.

“Leaders this offseason have been Vince Gohlke, Justin Fiene, Donovan Forester, and Jarien Jones,” Altstadt pointed out. There are many things that can make a leader, but Coach Altstadt is looking for “players who are invested in the team” even when people aren’t watching. 

Softball

The New Berlin West softball team is looking to carry on the success they’ve had, being conference champions the past five years. Last season, the team finished regional champions and made it to the sectional finals game, unfortunately losing to Catholic Memorial High School.

Coach Timothy Minik is looking forward to the season and has high expectations for the team as they hope to bring home a sixth conference championship. In order to do this, Coach Minik said “everyone must buy into their role… it’s one thing talking about it and another thing actually doing it.” 

Although the expectations are high, the team will face tough conference opponents such as Eisenhower, Greendale, and Pius as well as South Milwaukee and Whitnall, who are both a part of the Woodland East Conference. Despite the competition from the other teams, Coach Minik said, “we can’t worry about what other teams are doing, we have to focus on ourselves.” 

There are many people that Coach Minik has in mind as leaders for this year. When talking about Ella Wyskochil and Elena Barnes, he said, “they have been on varsity for four years and are probably more comfortable being leaders outwardly.” He also thinks that Lydia Trudell, Grace Timmers, and Jennalyn Mallmann will all step up in their own way. While these are some teammates that stand out to Coach Minik, he said, “everyone can be a leader, they might just do it in a different way.” 

Coach Minik said, “I’m looking forward to helping us continue what we’ve been doing here in New Berlin West softball.” He is excited to work with each of the players and communicate with them to create a good team chemistry. Coach Minik also explained, “we have a really good coaching staff that’s been around for a long time.” Between the coaches and the talented players, this season should be another successful one. 

Golf

Last year, the New Berlin West golf team finished second in the Woodland Conference tournament. Coach Steven Murdock explained, “Carson Rose was Woodland Conference Player of the year last year.” The talent continued with both Aidan Stange and Paul Nenning being second-team all-conference. 

This year, “getting enough numbers to go out for the team” seems to be one of the biggest challenges according to Coach Murdock. The team also used to practice at Deer Haven in New Berlin, but it is now closed, so finding a place to practice will pose another challenge this season. 

Aside from these challenges, Coach Murdock seems confident with the team this year. He said, “I think we’ll be competitive, I think we’ll be in the middle of the pack.” 

Because the team this season will be young, people like Sam Susek, Aidan Stange, Aiden Newton, and Leo Dadian will have to help step up and lead the team. Coach Murdock mentioned,  “Aidan Stange has the most experience playing varsity level golf.” Stange has had a lot of instruction and has competed in many high-level tournaments so he will use his own knowledge to advance the team. Coach Murdock also said, “Sam Susek has played varsity and a lot of other sports so he knows what it takes to be a varsity athlete.” 

While golf looks a lot like normal sports in the way that they practice every day to compete, there are also many differences in comparison to other sports. Golf never practices at school, they have to go to ranges and all the meets are away. According to Coach Murdock, the kids “have to be mature and reliable” because they are often alone on the courses, so they have to keep track of their own rules and their own scores. 

Coach Murdock explained, “I always like to see improvement. Once the golf season starts we have a little bit of practice before we compete.” Because the season is so short, it is exciting to be able to see what kids do and what they learn in the off-season, which is where most of the improvement comes. 

Girl’s Soccer 

With the 2020 soccer season being canceled and the 2021 season being shortened, the New Berlin West girls soccer team and their coach, Andrew Ellis, are excited to get back to a regular season that spans from mid-March to mid-May. 

Coach Ellis said, “I thought last season went pretty well considering we had a condensed season.” Because of this shortened season, the girls had games three times a week instead of two times a week, leaving them only one to two days of practice to prepare for their games. 

This year, Ellis said, “our goal is to ramp up, see if we can win conference again. We won conference in 2019.” He explained that in soccer, it is always a challenge to figure out how the team all works together because there is no time for plays or timeouts. Ellis said, “usually you have a plan of who’s going to play where based on the last year then it usually never goes to plan. You kind of have to tinker with the lineup.” However, Coach Ellis is confident with the returning experience, as there are ten seniors, and thinks the team will be good this year. 

When hoping for a good year, it is important to have teammates who step up into a leadership role. Coach Ellis stated, “I’m hoping Annika (Groendal) really steps up, not that she doesn’t step up, but I’m hoping she can take the next step in being a leader.” Coach Ellis also expects the same from Amelia Sagadin and Christa Borchardt. 

Track

The New Berlin West track and field program is ready for the season ahead. Last year the team was able to have an outdoor season and according to Coach James Braun “the season was really great.” This year they will be able to complete an outdoor season as well as an indoor season. The first meet will be hosted here at New Berlin West in the Drexel Fieldhouse on March 16, 2022.

As far as this upcoming season goes Coach Braun’s expectation is “to continue to build on the progress” that was made during last season. The program has a lot of returning athletes that are excited to be back. Many people have signed up early and numbers seem to be really good. “The hope is with added numbers comes added success,” said Coach Braun. 

For many athletes this year will be their first time with an indoor season because of Covid-19. With this “there will be some growing pains and some learning curves that we will have to tackle and overcome” said Coach Braun. Even though it might be a challenge it is also exciting as it brings a little bit of normalcy back to the track season. The program also has many leaders on the girl’s side as well as emerging leaders on the boy’s side that can help overcome some of these learning curves.

The first 2021-22 track and field practice was held on March 7th. The program is hoping to have multiple athletes continue through the first weekend in June, as that is when the state meet will happen. Coach Braun said he “loves the fact that we have such high expectations and I’m excited to get back to a bit of the norm”

Tennis

With the start of the boy’s tennis season approaching, Coach Trevor Hill is looking forward “to getting outside and to having some fun.” There’s always a lot going on and he wants tennis to be a safe place where his athletes can relax and enjoy the game. 

Taking a look back at the 2020-21 season the program had really good numbers with 20+ boys playing on the team. One of the doubles teams earned a three seed for the state tournament and there were multiple players that placed in the middle of the conference tournament. As a program, they finished right in the middle of the Woodland West Conference.

“When we practice well the performance on the court typically translates,” said Coach Hill. One of Coach Hill’s expectations for the program is to develop good practice habits in order to help them be successful throughout the entirety of the season. In addition, Coach Hill wants to make sure that the boys are competing at a high level in every match. 

Just like in a lot of other spring sports the weather has a big impact on when the boys will be able to play their matches. “Sometimes if you have certain matches that get delayed or rained out then you kind of have to compress the season and sometimes there’s going to be a lot of matches within a week,” said Coach Hill. This means that they have to value the time they do get between matches and make sure that they continue to learn and get better for the next match. 

The team has many returning players that will make really good leaders this season. “Tyler Eberle has been on our varsity team for his whole career and he’s one of those guys that has been playing at the high singles level,” Coach Hill pointed out. He also mentioned Aaron Bertsch, Ethan Wentz, and Ryan Label and said he hopes “that they can set the tone for the whole team and have some positive attitudes and lead by example on and off the court.”