Meier, Gold Team Win 2010 Omaha Challenge

CHARLESTON, S.C. – CSU baseball’s gold team may have finished on top in the team race, but it was Brantley Meier who took home the individual award at the Buccaneers’ 2010 Omaha Challenge this fall.

The Omaha Challenge is a part of the baseball program’s offseason workouts implemented by head coach Stuart Lake and his staff to help the players get ready for the upcoming season.  The Challenge consists of 13 events: one rep each of a maximum bench press, back squat and hang clean; a dumbbell bench rep test; a minute-long back squat rep test; broad jump; farmers’ walk; 1.5 mile run; 300-yard shuttle run; a timed obstacle course and maximum rep tests for push-ups, pull-ups and sit ups. 

“We decided to implement a new phase into our program this fall that I learned from Clemson University and it is called the Omaha Challenge,” said Coach Lake.  “Since our goal as a baseball program is to make it to Omaha, Neb., for the Men’s College World Series, we call it the ‘Omaha Challenge’.”

The events are designed to test players’ conditioning in almost every aspect of being physical from strength, body control, explosive movements, endurance and overall toughness.  The team declares an individual winner as well as a team award.  The coaching staff’s goal is for each player to aim for the individual award while also taking accountability for their teams’ effort.   Players were awarded points based on their individual performances. 

Senior outfielder Brantley Meier was the overall individual winner with 1,111.72 total points.  He was followed closely by fellow senior Bentley Christmas, who had 1,103.66 points.  Redshirt senior Matt Still (1,058.19 points), junior Ali Williams (1,019.44 points) and senior Derek Smith (1,002.18 points) also had impressive individual efforts.

The Gold Team came away with the team award after accumulating 7879.44 total points.  Led by Christmas, Still and Williams, the Gold Team also consisted of senior captain Tom Burkett, junior Corey Deighan, sophomore Chanler Cox, sophomore Kyle Ward, sophomore Ben Qualkinbush and freshman Dennis Buckley. 

“We will continue to do the Omaha Challenge to conclude our fall semester from here on,” said Coach Lake.  “The guys really bough into it and it brought out some competition as well as personality in our players.  These events were very fun to watch.”