With several fall club sports about to start competition, here is an outlook on the season:
Baseball
The Ole Miss Club Baseball team starts its season on Saturday, Sept. 14 at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The team, part of the National Club Baseball Association, is an all student-led team with no official coaching staff.
Ole Miss Club Baseball is set to play four series in the fall, including games with Vanderbilt University and Georgia College and State University, and a spring schedule against mostly SEC opponents. The Rebels will hold home competitions at American Legion Park in Batesville, Miss., on Nov. 16 and 17.
Ole Miss Club Baseball President and catcher James Moore shared the team’s goals for this season.
“We hope to be above .500 this year,” Moore said. “We definitely just want to keep building on the success we had late last year and most of all just have fun.”
Hockey
The Ice Rebels start the season on Friday, Sept. 13 at the Mid-South Ice House in Olive Branch, Miss., against Washington University, with game two of the series on Sept. 14.
The Division II Ole Miss hockey team is coming off of an improved but underwhelming season. However, with several top players set to return with a year of college experience, the team is expected to be significantly more competitive.
Joseph Robinson, one of the team’s top forwards, was sidelined for all but five games last season due to injury. Now fully recovered, Robinson is ready to contribute in the upcoming games.
Richard Mugler, the team’s top goalie, also missed most of the Rebels’ games due to injury. This season, he is set to deliver strong goaltending, starting in the majority of series throughout the year.
Ole Miss will welcome Division I team Alabama and ACHA side Arkansas to the Ice House on Nov. 15 and 16 and the following weekend on Nov. 22 and 23.
The Rebels recently introduced an additional Division III hockey team. The 2024-25 season will be the first year Ole Miss has two teams competing at once. Although ineligible for the playoffs, the Division III Rebels’ first game will be Sept. 13 at Eastern Kentucky University.
The new team will be led by head coach Mike McAteer and assistant David Dachille.
Rugby
Ole Miss Club Rugby’s first scrimmage of the fall is Sept. 14, followed by its first official match on Sept. 21.
The Rugby Rebels will host home competitions at the Blackburn-McMurray Sports Complex, formally known as the Ole Miss Intramural Fields. They will play two seasons, one in fall and the other in spring. In the fall, they play with 15 players on each team, and in the spring they field seven per team.
The fall schedule features single matches of two 40-minutes halves, while the spring has two seven-minute halves. Spring season games consist solely of tournaments, so several games are played in one day.
The team competes against Mississippi State University, the University of Memphis, the University of Alabama-Huntsville, Louisiana State University and Georgia Tech in the fall.
Two standout players to watch this year include senior journalism major and fly-half Jake Daley and sophomore electrical engineering major and scrum-half Austin Turner.
Bennett Murphy, a sophomore criminal justice major and back row rugby player, commented on his teammate’s skill and performance.
“Jake’s been playing since probably as long as we’ve been alive. … His game knowledge is amazing,” Murphy said. “Austin’s just one of those guys that goes out on the field and everything he does is exciting to watch.”
