Cliff Godwin Welcomes 20 Newcomers to Baseball Program | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's note: This post appears here courtesy of the news and information section for East Carolina University men's and women's sports.


    2019 Fall Roster (PDF) | Newcomer Bios (PDF)

    GREENVILLE, N.C. — Sixth-year head coach Cliff Godwin formally announced ECU baseball's 20-man incoming class Friday, which features six position players, 12 pitchers and a pair of two-way players.

    The 2019-20 recruiting class consists of one infielder (Charlie Larson), one outfielder (Trevor Losito), three catchers (Matt James, Ben Newton and Justin Wilcoxen), a pair of two-way players (Zach Agnos and Skylar Brooks), one utility player (Alec Makarewicz) and 12 pitchers (Cody Benton, Parker Boyle, Elijah Gill, Trystan Kimmel, Dylan Lawson, Nick Logusch, C.J. Mayhue, Nate Nabholz, Kenny Schechter, Carson Whisenhunt, A.J. Wilson and Bradley Wilson).

    "Once again we are very excited about our incoming class," Godwin said. "This class is as deep and as talented as any group we have had here at ECU. Coach (Jeff) Palumbo and our entire support staff did an unbelievable job putting this class together. Our main goal now is to cultivate our culture with our entire team. We are very excited about putting in a lot of work this fall so our program can continue to succeed on and off the field."

    Godwin, a two-time American Athletic Conference Coach-of-the-Year honoree, has guided ECU to four NCAA Regional berths (2018 and 2019 Greenville Regional host), two Super Regional appearances, the 2019 AAC Regular season title, a pair of AAC Tournament crowns and a 201-109-1 (.648) overall record. Ten players have earned All-America status, while 10 were NCAA All-Regional selections, 16 were named all-con­ference (15 first-teamers) and 13 were drafted by Major League Base­ball teams.

    Off the field, his teams have excelled in the class room by registering a 3.05 or higher grade point average in nine of 10 semesters, including a team-best 3.52 in the Fall of 2017, which bested the previous mark of 3.42 (Fall 2015). Under Godwin, a two-time Academic All-America selection, his teams have combined to have 240 members on the ECU Director of Athletics Honor Roll (3.0 or higher), while 66 Pirates have earned inclusion on The American All-Aca­demic Team maintaining a minimum 3.00 GPA.

    Following the 2019 season, the Pirates earned their fourth-straight Team Academic Excellence Award (2016-19) from The American and the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA). For the second time in Godwin's tenure, the Pirates had a pair of players named Google Cloud CoSIDA Academic All-America honors with Jake Agnos (first-team) and Alec Burleson's (third-team) selections in 2019. Two years ago, Travis Watkins (first-team) and Charlie Yorgen (third-team) were named CoSIDA Academic All-American, while in 2018 Jake Agnos was an All-District 3 First-Team selection.

    In the community, the Pirates have donated over 4,000 hours working with programs in the Pitt County area such as the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, Team IMPACT, Riley's Army, Cypress Glenn Retire­ment Community Flood Relief, Hurricane Relief, Red Cross, First Born Com­munity Development Center, ACES for Autism, Make-A-Wish Foundation and the James and Connie Maynard Children's Hospital.

    The new players and the veteran members of the ECU squad began fall classes Monday, Aug. 19, and will engage in a four-week period of conditioning drills and individual workouts.

    ECU begins its six-week, full-squad fall practice session on Thursday, Sept. 26 and will scrimmage every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Lewis Field inside Clark-LeClair Stadium leading up to their annual Purple & Gold World Series, which will be held Nov. 1-3 (times to be determined) and is free of charge to the fans. The Pirates also have a pair of exhibition games set for the fall when they travel to Virginia on Sunday, Oct. 13 before hosting Liberty on Sunday, Oct. 20.

    The Pirates return 17 letterwinners, including USA Collegiate National Team member and All-American Alec Burleson as well as AAC All-Conference performers Tyler Smith (2018) and Jake Kuchmaner (2019). In all, the roster consists of 12 freshmen, nine sophomores, 13 juniors and four seniors.