Paying one's dues as a team newcomer often isn't the most enjoyable thing.
Unless that toll helps construct success - as Matthew Knickerbocker's did through the spring and early summer during his first baseball season at Missouri University of Science & Technology.
Tops in the Great Lakes Valley Conference's West Division in 2016, the Miners' sudden run at an NCAA Division II Midwest Regional title was stopped by the University of Southern Indiana, 10 to 5, in the championship of the tournament, hosted May 19-23 by Quincy (Ill.) University.
From Evansville, Indiana, the Screaming Eagles had initially demoted S&T into the elimination rounds with a 7-5 victory on Day 1. The Miners rallied for four consecutive wins and survived to gain a rematch with all the marbles at stake - a place in the eight-team NCAA Div. II National Championships in Cary, North Carolina.
However, after playing five games in four days, S&T couldn't bring USI down, as it earned its first regional crown since capturing the 2014 National Championship over Grand Junction-based Colorado Mesa University.
But when all was said and done, the Miners' best season to date ended with a 39-19 overall record as the school reached the regional title game for the first time, which was just as impressive an accomplishment; S&T had been ousted relatively early from the GLVC Tournament and wasn't expected to receive a bid to the regional at all.
The Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament was held at Grand Park in Westfield, Indiana, May 12-15. S&T's season - already featuring the most regular-season victories in program history - was thought to have been ended via a 9-8 loss to eventual champs University of Indianapolis in a Day 3 elimination game.
Listed on the Miners' 38-player roster as a 6-foot, 1-inch, 170-pound switch-hitting freshman infielder, Knickerbocker, a 2015 Bayfield High graduate, was indeed part of the squad but saw no official action or recorded any statistics for 2016 GLVC Coach-of-the-Year Todd DeGraffenreid.
On Aug. 4, Missouri S&T was announced as one of 24 NCAA Division II teams, and one of four from the GLVC, receiving the American Baseball Coaches Association's 2016 Team Academic Excellence Award. Each team had at least a 3.0 collective grade-point average.
Currently, Knickerbocker's major at the Rolla-based university is petroleum engineering. Not a bad choice at all considering that an August 2014 USA Today poll ranked - primarily based on return on investment and overall college quality - S&T third amongst the United States' top engineering schools.
Heading that list was Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Georgia Tech checked in at No. 2, while the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fourth.
