WINONA, Minn. — Saint Mary's University of Minnesota baseball coach Nick Winecke is not one to enjoy being in the spotlight.
 
Yet that's exactly where the sixth-year head coach found himself Wednesday, as the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference named Winecke this year's MIAC Jim Dimick Coach of the Year, after guiding the Cardinals to a third-straight trip to the conference's post-season tournament.
 
"Individual honors speak volumes about the whole group," said Winecke, who was one of eight members of the Saint Mary's baseball team to earn MIAC post-season honors — including four First-Team All-MIAC, three MIAC All-Defensive Team and the MIAC's Rookie of the Year. "Those seven individuals would not be winning awards like that were it not for the efforts of the entire team.
 
"And it's the same thing for me," Winecke added. "Without Jake (assistant coach Pat Jacobsen) and Nick (assistant coach Nick Whaley), we wouldn't be having this conversation. This is the ultimate team award — it should be the coaching staff of the year away, they deserve it as much as I do."
 
The Cardinals, who have won 18 or more games — and appeared in the MIAC Tournament — in each of Winecke's last three seasons, used a late-season charge to punch their ticket to the conference tourney this season.
 
Needing wins in three of their last four games, the Cardinals swept Bethel — the MIAC's regular-season runner-up — and St. Olaf in their final two regular-season doubleheaders to lock up the No. 3 seed in the four-team MIAC Tournament.
 
"We got off to a bit of a rocky start, but sometimes you have to go through the tough times to appreciate the good times," said Winecke, whose team went 1-2 at the conference tournament, sandwiching a 3-0 win over Saint John's around 11-8 and 7-4 losses to Bethel. "This group hung together, played hard, trusted the process and learned a lot about themselves and each other.
 
"The players are the ones that deserve a lot of the credit for this (Coach of the Year) honor — it's not me out there fielding ground balls, or getting the clutch hits."