The Western Illinois Leathernecks baseball team is the varsity intercollegiate

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

program of

Western Illinois University Western Illinois University (WIU) is a public university in Macomb, Illinois, United States. It was founded in 1899 as Western Illinois State Normal School. As the normal school grew, it became Western Illinois State Teachers College. Once West ...

Macomb, Illinois Macomb () is a city in and the county seat of McDonough County, Illinois, United States. It is situated in western Illinois, about southwest of Peoria, Illinois, Peoria. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of the c ...

, United States. The team is a member of the

Ohio Valley Conference The Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) is a collegiate athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern and Southeastern United States. It participates in Division I of the NCAA; the conference's football programs compete in partnership with ...

, which is part of the

National Collegiate Athletic Association The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

's Division I. Western Illinois’ first baseball team was fielded in 1903-04. The team plays its home games at Alfred D. Boyer Stadium, located on Western Illinois's campus. The Leathernecks are coached by Terry Davis. The Leathernecks became a member of the

on July 1, 2023.

History

Early history

The program's first season of play was 1903-04. On September 19, 2019, Andy Pascoe was named the seventh head coach in Leathernecks history.

Conference affiliations

Interstate Intercollegiate Athletic Conference The Interstate Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (IIAC) was a college athletic conference that existed from 1908 to 1970 in the United States. At one time the Illinois Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, or IIAC, was a robust league that cla ...

(1948–1970) * Independent (1971–1984) *

Summit League The Summit League, or The Summit, is an NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletic conference with its membership mostly located in the Midwestern United States, from Minnesota in the east, to the Dakotas, Nebraska and Colorado to the West, and Mis ...

(1985–2023) *

(2024–present)

Alfred D. Boyer Stadium

The stadium opened on May 6, 2006, and has a seating capacity of 500. The stadium is named for Alfred D. Boyer, Western Illinois Class of 1972, whose $150,000 donation allowed the facility to be built. The venue features a

press box The press box is a special section of a sports stadium or arena that is set up for the media to report about a given event. It is typically located in the section of the stadium holding the luxury box and can be either enclosed or open to the ...

, chairback seating, a

Daktronics Daktronics, Inc. is an American company based in Brookings, South Dakota, that designs, manufactures, sells, and services video displays, scoreboards, digital billboards, dynamic message signs, sound systems, and related products. It was found ...

scoreboard, and 60-foot-long dugouts.

Head coaches

Western Illinois's longest tenured head coach was Dick Pawlow, who coached the team from 1970 to 1998, winning 545 games.

Notable former players

Below is a list of notable former Leathernecks and the seasons in which they played for Western Illinois. *

Paul Reuschel Paul Richard Reuschel (born January 12, 1947) is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played all or part of five seasons in Major League Baseball from 1975 to 1979. Reuschel began his professional career when he was drafted by th ...

(1965–1968) * Rick Reuschel (1967–1970) * Rick Short (1993–1994)

References

External links

* {{Illinois-baseball-team-stub