KALAMAZOO, Mich. — “A local juco where I could just drive 30 minutes to campus was nice and to focus on baseball year round was perfect for me,” said Ryan Dykstra.
Now with two years of junior college baseball under his belt, Byron Center native Ryan Dykstra is ready to take the next step.
“I would bat third so I kinda had to be the power guy but here I had a little different role which took a little to get used to but after buying into Coach Piechocki’s strategy and stuff, the success finally came after two weeks of struggles but I just bought in and it ended up working out,” said Dykstra.
Ryan is in his first season with the Kalamazoo Growlers. He currently is 5th in the league with 26 RBI’s.
“Well what I think he’s done better than anyone is buy into our system. I think Ryan has over 30 walks. You know he’s a guy that’s 5th or 6th in the Northwoods League and he has no home runs. But he gets on base. When there’s guys in scoring possession he gives us a team at bat, he makes sure he drives in that run. He’s been a center piece of our offense in that three-hole where he’s always gonna get on base, he’s always gonna move a guy up and he’s always been that spitfire guy that you need as an offense that is always going to go out and get on base and that’s been Ryan for us,” said Head Coach Cody Piechocki.
This past Tuesday was the first day off the team has had in almost a month. Now that they’re in the second half of the season, it’s all about making timely adjustments.
“You’re playing every day and that’s tough. If you need to make an adjustment you only have a few hours to do it before you’re on the field again. So making quick adjustments in between at bats and even games is what I’ve been working on,” said Ryan.
He’ll stay on the West side until the end of August to get the Growlers through their playoff push and then turn his attention to playing at Oakland University.
“The baseball program and everything Coach Banfield is doing. He made a lot of changes there. He going to be on his third year and they’re already having a lot of success so just to be a part of that program and what he has to offer and that change, I want to be a part of that,” said Ryan.
He’s a few years out from the MLB draft but isn’t counting it out of the picture for what his future could look like.
“That’s the goal and just enjoying the ride. Doing everything I can to achieve that goal. Just want to be able to say I did everything I could and if it didn’t work out at least I gave it my best shot,” said Ryan.
