Senior pitcher Jonathon Hanscom and senior infielder Andrew Schroeder are both from Mundelein, Illinois. They grew up playing baseball together, and after two years at different colleges, they are playing together again at Eastern.

Hanscom and Schroeder played baseball together since they were around 8 years old.

“I knew Jonathon since we were little,” Schroeder said. “We grew up in the same community at Mundelein. We did go to high school together and played high school baseball together for four years.”

After high school, they went to different colleges: Hanscom to Lewis University, Schroeder to Rollins College his freshman year and Iowa Western Community College his sophomore year.

They both transferred to Eastern at the same time with Schroeder committing a week before Hanscom.

“I entered the portal to transfer and [Eastern was] like ‘Hey your buddy Andrew Schroeder just committed to Eastern,’” Hanscom said. “It was just such a shock to me because to hear his name couple years later and then it was like just a couple days ago it was just before I was coming over here for my visit, they’re like yeah Schroeder just committed.”

Schroeder didn’t talk to Hanscom before he decided to commit to Eastern, but he said that head coach Jason Anderson asked him some questions about him.

“I told [Anderson] that in high school he was a good fastball, changeup pitcher,” Schroeder said. “In the time that we had between college and high school, I don’t know if that changed at all, but I told him that that’s what I knew about him, and that he was really effective in high school.”

Hanscom said that Schroeder being on the team helped a little bit to convince him to join the team, but the main reason that he transferred was the community around Eastern and the belief from Anderson.

After their junior year was over, they decided to move into an apartment together.

“We were like ‘Hey let’s get an apartment together,’” Hanscom said. “It made everything really simple because from last year to this year, there weren’t too many people that I was like close enough to wanting to live with, but him being from Mundelein having that background with him made it a lot easier to go live with him.”

“I like having him as a roommate,” Schroeder said. “We’re always talking baseball together and anything else that like schoolwork or whatever else where he’s a really helpful roommate honestly to have.”

They both said that it’s comfortable knowing someone on the team when you’re joining it.

“It’s just nice knowing someone coming in,” Schroeder said. “Having that friendship and then also like knowing what kind of pitcher he was.”

“I would say that just having that background with him is really nice cause I always have somebody to fall back to that I am comfortable around,” Hanscom said. “So even though we don’t play in the same positions, you’re in the dugout together all the time so we get to support each other that way.”

Luther Yoder can be reached at 581-2812 or at lyoder@eiu.edu.