KQ2 Sports sits down with Seth Winkler, St. Joseph Mustang and MoWest Griffon baseball player

BRETT KENNEDY: "How is your first time here with the Mustangs going so far?"

SETH WINKLER: "It's been an absolute blast. This is my first year of summer Ball, and I couldn't have found a better experience, the guys are great. Johnny (Coy) is great. The atmosphere of playing in front of this many people for the first time, that's really, really cool. You don't really get that at a college game, but the community is awesome and super supportive."

KENNEDY: "Talk about Phil Welch Stadium. Everybody talks about this crowd and it's a little nerve-wracking at first, but then you get used to it. It's special playing here for a lot of these guys."

WINKLER: My first game here, the heart was definitely pumping a little bit, seeing this many people. I think there was opening night, like 3,500 people here. Running out there before the anthem, you look back and there's everybody there. So now you want to play well, rise to the expectation, but once you get used to it, it's a lot of fun. Listening to the fans, people calling your name that you haven't even met yet, just feeling the support feels really good."

KENNEDY: I talked to your MoWest teammate Micah Kobusewski two weeks ago. What's it been like to continue baseball experience playing summer ball with him as well as at MoWest?"

WINKLER: "It's been a lot of fun. One of the things that's been nice is like having another teammate, a guy that I know on the team rather than going into a team that I just absolutely know nobody on. So I think that helped a lot with the transition of going into summer ball this year. It's been a blast to continue. Obviously, Micah, he's not at MoWest anymore and I had a great experience playing with him. He's a great teammate. It's been a lot of fun continuing to play ball with him."

KENNEDY: "Let's talk about that year with MoWest. Practically a brand new roster for you guys, new coaching staff with Michael Keeran. You guys had a pretty decent year, first winning record since 2018. You beat some ranked teams, upsetting two seed Rogers State in the MIAA tournament. Talk to me about your experience with the Griffs last season?"

WINKLER: "Had a lot of ups and downs early, learning with the coaching staff and obviously with 30 new transfers. We have guys from all over the country, from California to Florida. So a lot of different personalities, but it was a lot of fun. Definitely towards the end there, we started to get hot, get into a groove, started playing some really good baseball, and I think this next year, we're returning a few key players. We graduated a lot of guys. We should have a good year coming up to build off of what we did this last year."

KENNEDY: "Talk to me about the clubhouse and the dugout. It seems like you guys are a pretty close group so far just a couple of weeks in. I talked to Boston Bruce last week, and he says this roster is a group of guys that want to win and they want to win now."

WINKLER: "We all want to win. We're all competitive. We've all come from college programs that have the expectation of winning. We've all gotten to a place in our careers where we've performed well. So we all want to win now, obviously the culture here at the Mustangs is 10 championships, so we want to get that 11th this year. So we want to continue that and have fun doing it."

KENNEDY: "Playing for Johnny Coy, everyone loves Johnny. Just what is he like as a head coach and a manager for you guys?"

WINKLER: "He's the coolest guy ever. Like, I love Johnny. I didn't know what the expectation was, but like coming in, I hadn't even met him face to face coming in until the first day we got here. Stuff goes good or bad, he's the same guy, he's still encouraging. He just lets you play ball. I think that's the most purest form that we can do here at the Mustangs is he lets you go out and play, which I think that's why we perform as well as we do."