On Tuesday, April 21, the WIAA Board of Control asserted to cancel all 2020 spring competitions, baseball included. While saddened for the graduating class of 2020, the PBR Wisconsin staff will do its best to highlight what could have been this spring, in what was set to be an exciting campaign filled with intriguing storylines to know and players to follow.

We published our ‘Watchlist Squads’ post on Monday, April 20, spotlighting almost 20 need-to-know programs that fell short of official ‘Bubble’ or Power 25 status for our preseason team rankings. Today, and for the remainder of the week, we’re going to be individually detailing our ‘On the Bubble’ teams – teams that earned serious consideration for our Preseason Power 25 Rankings, but ultimately fell just short.

Our 2020 preseason coverage continues today.

Team: Westosha Central
Preseason Rank: On The Bubble
2019 Record: 10-13
Conference: Southern Lakes
WIAA Class: D-1
Head Coach: Jacob Morman
Playoff Run: Regional Finalists
2019 Final Rank: NR
Returning Starters: 5
Returning Pitchers: 3 

OUTLOOK

Our third Southern Lakes squad, Westosha Central, would have benefited from a 2020 spring season particularly because their talented youth on the roster would have been able to acclimate to the varsity level quicker. With that being said, the Falcons should be ready to compete in 2021 with this youthful core, but this season had the potential to be special – provided their underclassmen came along sooner than was fair to expect.

There was an interesting mix of seniors and aforementioned youth to have made Westosha Central a sleeper squad to know in the region this year.

We’ll touch on those 2020s in our Senior Spotlight below, but the juniors here like OF/RHP Kyle Mitchell, INF Matt Felske, and RHP/INF Jack Rose would have helped slot around underclassmen like LHP/DH Michael Mulhollon (2022), INF Dakota Veium (2022), RHP/INF Adam Switalski (2023; Indiana commit). Mulhollon and Switalski in particular are two of the top prospects in their respective classes and we were eager to see them make their varsity debuts this spring, so that’ll have to wait.

The gelling of these 2021s, ‘22s, and ‘23s was going to be integral to the success of the Falcons this spring. The seniors are a steady, reliable group, so as these aforementioned prospects went, Westosha Central had the makings of being the kind of program you wanted to avoid playing come playoff time.

SENIOR SPOTLIGHT

This was a solid set of seniors losing out on their final prep season: RHP Cooper Griffiths (Rend Lake JC), INF Tyler Horton (Rock Valley JC), OF Andrew Hrncar (Central Alabama CC), INF/RHP Bryce Kerkman, INF Myles Kazumura, and INF Kyle Kitterman. The sum of parts here, after adding in the juniors, sophs, and freshmen above, make for one interesting and competitive roster. Griffiths is a No. 1 type backed up by fellow senior Kerkman, and exciting underclassmen Mulhollon and Switalski. That’s a talented rotation already. Horton, Kazumura, and Kitterman each thrived on offense in 2019. All of a sudden, it’s a fairly deep lineup and rotation that only needed time to gel before Regionals began.

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