Photo by Iowa Central Athletics: Iowa Central players, including Sawyer Stein (33), Tate Perrin (1) and Wyatt Myers (14), embrace at home plate during the NJCAA World Series.

Before we turn the page on another historic Iowa Central baseball season, I want to do a double take on the statistics and numbers the Tritons put up because I certainly did while thumbing through the updated record books from head coach Eric Stein.

Iowa Central reached the “final four” at the NJCAA national tournament for the second consecutive season, and the offense fueled the run in almost unprecedented fashion. The Tritons hit a junior college national Div. II-record 190 home runs as a team — an average of over 2.9 long balls per game.

To put that number into perspective, the all-college single-season record before this year had been 188 by LSU in 1997. The junior college mark was held for over a quarter of a century by Seminole State (187 in 1999).

Iowa Central’s remarkable propensity for going deep was only overshadowed this spring by Div. I JUCO powerhouse Johnson County College out of suburban Kansas City. JCC slugged 219 homers during its 67-3 national championship campaign to shatter the overall collegiate record. As it stands today, though, the 2026 Tritons are in the runner-up spot on that list — definitely a noteworthy place to be.

This Iowa Central squad hit 56 more long balls than the Tritons of two years ago, who had set a new NJCAA Div. II record. Stein’s last four squads have gone deep a total of 510 times, and rank as the top four single-season totals in program history.

Iowa Central also obliterated the team record this spring for runs batted in (790, or 180 more than the previous best); on-base percentage (.511, which is 42 points higher than the former high-water mark); runs scored (858 vs. 661); batting average (.367 vs. .355); hits (758 vs. 671); slugging percentage (.732 vs. .680) and walks (505 vs. 430). George McIntyre (32 home runs), Sawyer Stein (30) and Tate Perrin (21) led the power surge; before this year, no Triton had ever hit more than 21 homers in a single season.

Stein set an NJCAA Div. II all-time record with 113 RBI in 2026, and McIntyre also now sits atop the Div. II national single-season list after scoring 136 runs. To put those stats in perspective, the previous program RBI mark was 94, and the runs scored record had been 89. McIntyre, Stein (101) and Perrin (95) all cleared that in 2026 alone.

The 6-foot-4, 225-pound McIntyre also rewrote the program records for batting average (.487), hits (110), on-base percentage (.621), slugging percentage (1.009) and walks (69). The Edina, Minn. native has signed to play for Division I Dallas Baptist University of the Pac-12.

Stein has turned this program into a powerhouse, which isn’t easy to do here given the rigors of the Iowa Community College Athletic Conference. The Tritons were joined in the Top-15 nationally this year by Southeastern and Kirkwood, while programs like DMACC and NIACC also have extensive track records at the NJCAA World Series. He is just the third Iowa Central baseball coach to reach 300 career wins, joining Rick Pederson (551) and Rick Sandquist (346).

Pederson and Sandquist, both legends in their own right, won over 67 percent of their games while at the helm. Stein is currently at 72.3 – thanks in large part to a 193-53 run the last four seasons (a 78.5-percent clip).

Given its resources, facilities – Rogers Sports Complex is widely considered to be a premier NJCAA baseball venue – and Stein’s leadership, the Tritons have emerged as a true force in the JUCO ranks. With 32 players from Iowa and 17 Minnesotans on this year’s roster, they’ve also done so with a bevy of regional talent.

This is yet another Iowa Central athletic program built the right way. The stats don’t lie: the Tritons are both fun to follow and successful at a level that would make the program’s previous coaches proud. Stein also preaches the importance of chemistry and teamwork — intangibles that make an already-talented ballclub that much more dangerous.

Stein’s next step is to get them into the national finals, where they’ve been three times (1997 and 2000 under Sandquist; 2003 with Pederson) and win that elusive national championship. If anyone can do it, it’s him.

Eric Pratt is Sports Editor at The Messenger. Contact him via email at sports@messengernews.net, or on Twitter @ByEricPratt