For love of the game: Raiders’ year-round passion for baseball leads to unparalleled success

QUINCY — At the most elemental level, it’s a warehouse.

The building has been remodeled and retrofitted to be a baseball haven, but the brick exterior, the large, garage-style doors and the location close to the Mississippi River suggest it once was used for storage, construction or manufacturing.

The Quincy Notre Dame baseball players embrace that history.

For them, Complete Game Training Academy is each of those things in a modern-day baseball sense. It stores the equipment they use to train with year-round. It’s where they construct better swings, better glove work and better overall fundamentals. It’s a place to manufacture friendships and teamwork.

This warehouse is more like a clubhouse for those with baseball on the brain.

“It’s something that we take for granted sometimes,” said Jake Schisler, the Quincy Notre Dame senior outfielder/pitcher who will be the starting hurler at 5 p.m. Friday in the Class 2A state semifinal against Joliet Catholic at Peoria’s Dozer Park. “But it’s like anything else, it’s a place to go and hang out with your buddies, joke around and hopefully get some work in and just make yourself better every day.

“It’s like going to someone’s house where you go to hang out after school every day. It just happens to be where we go to talk, work and live baseball.”

For this group, they live for the love of the game.

“It’s an unbelievable amount when you think about how much we love the game,” senior third baseman Brady Kindhart said. “It’s the best game you can play. It gets frustrating sometimes. It’s a game of up-and-downs, but it’s awesome. I love it.

“It’s the competitive edge. Coming out here and being able to do what you can do every day to get better, being with your brothers, it’s special. Coming out here to the field to play baseball is the best part of my day every day. I love doing it.”

It’s why this trip to the state tournament matters so much.

In three varsity seasons — their freshman year was wiped out by the COVID-19 pandemic — QND’s Class of 2023 has compiled an 85-10 record. This season, the Raiders have gone 35-1, matching the 2004 team for the single-season record for victories. Their 32-game win streak is the longest by a QND squad, and they were the first team to win 30 games in the regular season.

Now, they are the third team in program history to reach the final four and want nothing more than to trump the 1952 and 2004 state runner-up teams by winning the state championship.

“It’s been our goal long before this season began,” senior first baseman Dalton Miller said. “It was our goal long before last season. We play the game to win, and we invest everything we have in the game. We’re invested in seeing this all the way through.”

That has everything to do with being baseball players, not athletes who are playing baseball.

Sure, they play other sports. Miller was an all-state caliber linebacker for the QND football team. Schisler and Colin Kurk were part of the state title-winning soccer team. Alex Connoyer and Nolan Robb had roles on the 20-win basketball team.

Yet, nearly every one of them is a baseball player to the core.

Eight of the 10 seniors on the roster signed to play baseball in college. Kurk, who is headed to play soccer at Quincy University, is the only one playing a different sport at the next level.

“I’ve been playing this game since I was 4 years old,” senior shortstop Jack Linenfelser said. “T-ball, throwing with my dad in the backyard, working on pitches, hitting in the backyard into a net. Everything about it I love. I love the people you get to meet through it and the different relationships you build through baseball.”

Those relationships have enabled the Raiders to navigate an emotionally challenging week. Last Saturday, senior center fielder Tucker Tollerton, who had signed to play at John Wood Community College, was killed in an auto accident outside Hannibal, Mo., just hours after the Raiders won the sectional championship.

Less than 48 hours later, the Raiders beat Bloomington Central Catholic 13-1 in the Class 2A Springfield Super-Sectional, having leaned on each other to bring out the best in one another.

“We really are a family,” senior catcher Michael Stupavsky said. “We say that, but we show that, too. We pick each other up. We love each other.”

It’s why it is no surprise to see them together, especially with a bat, a ball and glove around.

“My favorite part is the guys,” Miller said. “It’s a true family of guys we have here. I really feel at home every time I step on the field. It’s the guys, the fans, the family aspect of QND. It’s definitely something special.”

It’s an engagement not every team gets from every player.

“A lot of people say, ‘I have to go to practice today,’” said first-year QND coach Rich Polak, who owns Complete Game Training Academy and has coached most of these players on travelling teams. “These guys say, ‘I get to go to practice today.’ There’s a huge difference in one word in those statements.

“When players have that thought process about the game — no matter what game it is, football, basketball, volleyball, etc. — that’s when the real progress starts.”

The progress has been taking place for more than a decade, and it takes place on the coldest and warmest of days.

“It’s year-round for all of us,” Schisler said. “That’s what I love so much about this team. The guys on the bench who are younger are seeing what we do. It’s five or six days a week in the offseason, hitting the weights, getting swings off the tee, throwing. It’s a commitment and it has to be to get to where we are.”

The commitment raises the level of competitiveness.

“The guys come out and work their butts off,” Linenfelser said. “They care so much about every little individual thing and try to get better at the game. They never give up. It’s nice to be with a group that builds each other up.

“It just makes you better. You try to one-up each other every time. With competition, it makes you a greater baseball player. Having that competition with everyone on the field makes you so much better.”

The competition is constructive, not destructive.

The game matters too much to let that happen.

“We love it more than anyone can imagine,” Stupavsky said. “Playing it for so many years together, going to school together, playing travel ball together, we’ve been involved with each other since we were toddlers. And we all love the game.”