WHO WE ARE

Illinois Club Baseball is an organization that offers students at the University of Illinois the opportunity to play competitive, collegiate level baseball. The club is run and maintained exclusively by students. Scheduling games, obtaining field space, hiring umpires, purchasing equipment, arraging road trips, and fundraising are all examples of duties performed by the club in order to uphold a high level of success.

Illinois Club Baseball got its start in the fall of 2003 when Cary Bolnick and Jay Goldberg created, what was then known as, the POPFLY (Preserving Our Pastime For Later Years) Baseball Club. That spring, members of the POPFLY Baseball Club met weekly to run drills, take batting practice, and have intrasquad scrimmages. Then, in the summer of '04, Bolnick and Goldberg were offered the chance to join the National Club Baseball Association (NCBA) by its president, Sandy Sanderson.

The NCBA, which was founded in 2000 by Sanderson, is an intercollegiate baseball league "driven to provide collegiate student-athletes with the opportunity to play competitive, organized college baseball." Bolnick and Goldberg jumped at the opportunity to join the league and in the fall of 2004 the POPFLY Baseball Club became the Illinois Club Baseball team and joined the Great Lakes-South Conference of the NCBA.

It didn't take long for Illinois to make its mark on the NCBA. In its very first year in the league, Bolnick and Goldberg lead the Illinois Club Baseball team all the way to the National Championship Game in Bradenton, FL. In the end, the Illini were defeated by Colorado State but the '05 season served to set a tone for all future Illinois club teams. In its inaugural season Illinois Club Baseball established itself as an organization built upon hard work, driven by pride, and fueled by the love of the game. These are the principles that continue to guide the organization today.

"Don't try to convince the kids from Illinois--the ones chest-bumping and high-fiving each other Sunday afternoon at McKechnie Field--that college club sports aren't that big a deal. When you work at something that hard for that long and come that far, no varsity label is needed."
- The Bradenton Herald