It may be hard to believe that amid the freezing temperatures and the ongoing excitement of NIU’s basketball squads, baseball season starts Saturday for NIU.

The Huskies’ Saturday contest against St. Louis will mark the resurrection of the NIU baseball program which was suspended in 1982. Tryouts were held last fall and since then the team has been preparing for its season-opener.

NIU baseball fans will be in for quite a treat this season as Huskies’ coach Joe “Spanky” McFarland will introduce an exciting and entertaining style of playing ball.

“We are going to be very exciting,” McFarland said. “We will do a lot of drag bunting, hit and runs, and base stealing. The strength of this team is that we have a lot of team speed, and we will try to use that to the best of our advantage.”

The team’s speed will be heavily relied upon this season as NIU enters what will be a year of new challenges against experienced competition.

McFarland is unsure of all of his team’s strengths or weaknesses until it gets a few games under its belt.

“We have 18 freshmen on this team, and we are young and inexperienced,” said McFarland. “As the season goes on, we want to get better and better.”

The Huskies will also try to turn the weather conditions in DeKalb to their advantage when opponents visit NIU.

“Our slogan will probably be ‘no wind chill, just a win chill,'” said McFarland. “We will try and get used to the weather and take advantage of it. It will make us mentally tough.”

McFarland feels that NIU fans will enjoy NIU baseball this season in what he describes as a “ballpark atmosphere” at the Huskie Baseball Diamond.

“(Students) can expect a lot of entertainment,” said McFarland. “There will be plenty of music and it will be fun.”