A solid debut season in the National Junior College Athletic Association’s Region 2 has landed Southeast Arkansas College its first trip to the regional tournament.
The SEARK baseball team will be one of eight teams competing in the Region 2 Division II Baseball Tournament at Majestic Park in Hot Springs, which begins Wednesday.
The Sharks played their debut baseball season as an independent last year. This was their first season as an official Region 2 member for that sport, making this their first year of eligibility for the postseason.
SEARK (33-23, 14-10 Region 2) will be the No. 4 seed from the region’s East Division and will begin its tournament run at 7 p.m. Wednesday against West No. 1-seed Northern Oklahoma College-Tonkawa.
The East division features seven Arkansas schools. The West division includes six Oklahoma schools and the University of Arkansas Rich Mountain.
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South Arkansas College, the reigning Region 2 champion, finished atop the region standings and will be the East’s No. 1 seed. Arkansas State University-Mountain Home is the No. 2 seed with tournament host National Park College claiming the No. 3 seed.
After NOC-Tonkawa, the other West division representatives will be No. 2-seed NOC-Enid, No. 3-seed Murray State College and No. 4-seed Carl Albert State College.
The tournament will use a double-elimination format. The winner of the Sharks’ game with NOC-Tonkawa will face the winner of a game between ASU Mountain Home and Murray State on Thursday, while the losers of those two games will also play.
The tournament will go through at least Saturday but could continue into Sunday if needed to crown a champion. The Region 2 champion will then travel to Arizona to face the Region 1 champion in a best-of-three series for the right to play in the NJCAA Division II Baseball World Series in Enid, Okla.
The Sharks have not played NOC-Tonkawa this year, though the schools split a four-game series last year.
SEARK split a four-game series with National Park over the weekend to finish the regular season. Before that series, the Sharks were on a 10-game winning streak. They finished in a three-way tie for fifth in the overall region standings with NOC-Enid and Murray State.
Shark sophomore Cameron Gonzalez is SEARK’s leading hitter, batting .413 this season with a .659 slugging percentage. His 44 RBIs are tied for the team lead. He has the sixth-best average in Region 2 and leads the region in stolen bases with 48.