That is unless you are a member of the Michigan Tech baseball club.

The baseball Huskies will close out their fall season this weekend with a three-game series at home against Winona State. A doubleheader will start at noon on Saturday at the Houghton High School baseball field. On Sunday the series will end with a 10 a.m. game at the high school as well.

The Huskies will enter this weekend at 1-2 having played a similar three game series against Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) over the first weekend of October.

According to Anthony Leick, the club’s president, the team has around 20-25 guys who participate regularly and join the team with varying degrees of baseball experience.

Michigan Tech baseball club’s AJ Clarey swings away earlier this month as the team took on the Milwaukee School of Engineering at Houghton High School in a three-game series. (Eddie O’Neill/Daily Mining Gazette)

“While the majority of the guys on the team have played high school baseball, we have some who haven’t played since grade school, and a few who haven’t played at all,” said Leick who is a third-year, civil engineer major. “It’s a good mix of talent, and all are welcome.”

Someone who is on the higher end of the baseball-talent scale is shortstop AJ Clarey. After graduating from high school in the Grand Rapids area, he was recruited to play NCAA DII baseball at Findlay University in Findlay, Ohio.

“It (baseball) was a great experience there, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study,” he said. “When I realized I wanted to be an engineer, I transferred to Tech.”

Clarey related that he was so excited to learn that he could continue to play the game he loved at a competitive level at Tech while continuing his studies.

“While we do not necessarily have the greatest talent in the field, there are a lot of guys out there who have a lot of passion for the game and for their education,” he said. “We are very much a like-minded group of guys which makes it great.”

The team practices twice a week at the Stanton Baseball Field.

“If you can make it, great, if not, that’s okay too. We put studies and academics before all else,” said Clarey, in terms of the club’s ethos. “I love the flexibility of the team.”

His counterpart on the infield, Logan Laughrey, echoed a similar sentiment.

The Milford native came to Tech thinking his baseball-playing days were over. The second baseman came to Houghton to study system engineering and discovered that there was a baseball club on campus at the University’s K Day.

“I was like this is great,” he said. “It was the best of both worlds.”

Laughrey is in his second year at Tech and said the best part of his Huskies’ baseball experience has been the team’s annual spring beak trip to Panama City Beach, Florida, in March.

“It is a long, long ride on our team buses south, but a lot of team bonding occurs,” he said. “Plus, it is just good to get away from here and the dreary, cold weather.”

In Florida, the Huskies will play games organized by the National Club Baseball Association (NCBA). It is a national governing body and organization for college club baseball. Like its counterpart — the NCAA — it divides clubs into DI, DII and DIII levels.

“We (MTU) compete at the DIII level,” said Leick. “It is a great organization. In fact, as members, they organize and schedule all of our fall games, the Spring Break trip and our spring games.

In April, the Huskies’ club will take to the road and play a series against Wisconsin-River Falls and against Minnesota-Duluth.

While all the Huskies spoken to were pleased with their performance against MSOE earlier this month, they hope they can do better this weekend against Winona.

“We’re looking for the sweep,” said Leick. “We’ve got quite a few more practices under our belt, and it should be a good one.”