By Jerry Shank
Maryland Director of Scouting

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Northwood

HEAD COACH: Tim Pritchar

CONFERENCE:  3A East Conference

2014 RECORD: 2-16

FINISH: Last

RETURNING STARTERS:  4

TOP PLAYERS: 
Jason Clingman
Jose Sola
Adrian Vasquez
Ramon Tavarez
Zach Bridwell
Yulian Pena

TEAM STRENGTHS
Northwood has a number of returning senior that the team hopes can inspire a strong foundation of young players to compete at a higher level.  One attribute that the team plans to use to their benefit is their team speed, which they intend to use to put pressure on opposing defenses.  The hop is that team speed can be a benefit for the defense. 

QUESTION MARK
Northwood is working on overall improvement and changing of a culture.   The biggest areas they are targeting is their pitching and defense. As we mentioned before, the team speed can be a benefit to their defense as the goal is to make the field smaller because of their players covering a lot of ground.  Making the routine plays and competing on the mound will be two huge areas that if they can make some improvements, you could see more wins added to their total.

WILDCARD
Jason Clingman is a sophomore transfer coming into the program and has shown good ability within the team already.  Look for the youngster to come in and get plenty of opportunities and have a nice season. Keep an eye out for Zach Bridwell also.  Another sophomore, Bridwell is also a young and talented player on the team and it shows some potential for the future with these two building blocks.   

OVERALL
The Gladiators come into the season with not a lot of high expectations with the main goal being they want to improve every day.  Coach Pritchar has expressed that the team has a desire to get better and learn more which is always a good sign within any program. Creating a culture is a process and Northwood hopes to be able to develop that through this season.  This will be a team to follow to see if they take a step in the right direction.