Former University of Redlands baseball star and current assistant coach Aaron Holley recently led the Cheyenne Grizzlies of the Mountain Collegiate Baseball League (MCBL) to their first league title in team history this past summer. Coaching alongside Holley was another former standout Bulldog and current Occidental College hitting coach, Luke Wetmore.
The Grizzlies posted a 20-18 mark during the regular season and capped off the playoffs in dramatic fashion by defeating the Fort Collins Foxes by a score of 2-1 to capture Cheyenne's first championship.
In the final game of the season, University of Redlands' own Michael Lessig '10 (Fountain Hills, AZ) threw a one-run, complete game to pick up the win from the mound. Lessig's impressive performance was the first complete game thrown by a Grizzly in the six-year history of the club. Along with Lessig, former Bulldog catcher Jefre Johnson '10 (Canby, OR) and pitcher Jack Winters '10 (Oradell, NJ) also contributed to the championship run.
Holley first joined the Grizzlies back in the summer of 2008 as an assistant coach and helped lead them to their highest win total at the time. . With Holley as a member of the Redlands staff, the Bulldogs have amassed an impressive record of 108-53, culminating in a conference title in 2006 and second-place finishes in 2008 and most recently in 2010. During his four-year career as a Bulldog student-athlete, Holley compiled a .325 batting average to go along with 58 RBI, 16 doubles, eight triples and 103 runs. Holley also played for the conference champion Bulldog football team during his freshman season.
Cheyenne welcomed Luke Wetmore to the staff this past season as the assistant coach. As a player, Luke was a four-year starter for the Bulldogs, posting a .325 batting average with 14 homeruns and 25 doubles. During his tenure at Redlands, the Bulldogs put together a 99-61 record and garnered the program's tenth conference title during the 2006 campaign. In his first year as a coach at Occidental, the Tigers hit .285 while ranking fifth in Division III for stolen bases with 134.
The MCBL is a summer collegiate baseball league with teams in Colorado and Wyoming featuring collegiate baseball players from around the country. Each team plays an eight-week schedule of 42 games, in addition to exhibition games and playoffs. The league is represented by four teams: the Cheyenne Grizzlies, Fort Collins Foxes, Greeley Grays and the Laramie Colts.