May 27, 2008

Senior Jeff Thomas blogged throughout the season about his experiences as a member of the Huskie baseball team. The outfielder from Loves Park, Ill., led the team in hitting and was named to the All-MAC team. Thomas' last posting is a reflection of the 2008 season and his career at Northern Illinois.

Final Blog

This is a sad day for all of us - my last blog of the year. I had a good time writing and filling everybody in on what was going on with the team. This was a new experience for me personally and when Dave [Brauer] (our media relations director) asked me to do this I asked, "How do I blog?" Eventually, I settled in to the job at hand and delivered the blogs.

It was a crazy season for our team this year. Going into our first week of games there was the tragic occurrence of 2/14/08, a difficult time for all of us. A couple weeks later on the night we were supposed to go down for a week of spring break games in Texas, Dallas had a snow storm and our travel was all messed up! We did get to go to Arizona for a week to open the season and play our first games in great weather since we were not able to play the previous weekend at Texas Tech. We also got to play at "The Cell" this year, which was just an amazing experience. We didn't quite finish where we wanted to in the regular season, just one win away from winning our division.

Individually, I feel as though I learned every year that I played at NIU and improved my game over those four seasons. Watching older and younger teammates plus opposing players has helped me greatly in playing my game. Another thing that has kept me in high spirits on and off the field is all of the support I received from the community, parents and fans. I have been blessed to play ball with a talented team for the past four years, a team that does not give up until the last out.

I would like to thank all my teammates for all the time they spent working hard to improve with me. I would like to also recognize some key people that helped me in my success thus far. First, I would like to thank God, my older brother Chris, Tom Rotello for giving me the opportunity to build my skills as a young player, and my parents for all of the support throughout my college career, oh yeah! And all the coaches for playing me and teaching me new aspects of the game!

Shout outs to coach Nappy Ray, White Lightning, Claw, Grizzly Bear, Beef, Ren, Ranny Deed, YEEAAHH Coach Carc, Long Ball, Danamal, Behm Boom, Middy, Starv, K Smi, Z, Ba, Mini Me, Burbs and Lacs, DJ Nasty Pants, A-Hole, Jocko, "Oh fa reeal" Hood, Oat Tree, Kap, BK, Souc, Chadderbox, Nitro, Dirty Deain, Cop, Disco Joe, Beck, Leon Smiff, Badge (both), Maz, my Peanut Butter M&M, B, Delmie, and my family.

Until the next blogger...

JT