The baseball fields were soaked beyond playability, but players walked out to tryouts despite the conditions. They knew this was there one shot to show the coaches what they could do, and each one treated it as a live or die situation.
The Bronco baseball team held tryouts on January 29 through February, excluding January. Because of rainy weather on Friday and Saturday, the original plans for tryouts had to be altered. Instead of players participating in evaluation drills on the field, they went to the batting cages, where coaches assessed their hitting skills.
“We were trying to get out on to the field and play more,” third baseman, Cuyler West, 12, said. “I think it really affected the freshman and the people who weren’t in class before.”
The ensuing Monday’s weather was suitable enough for the players to practice outdoors, yet the field was still too wet to play on. To compensate for this, the coaches decided to move tryouts to the parking lot. There, players went through conditioning and practiced fielding ground balls. The coaches were able to see which players had fast sprints, which would aid both in fielding balls in the infield and outfield, while also determining who had speedy base running potential.
“Well if you’re a good baseball player you’re going to be able to adapt,” West said. “If you’re bad on the field, you’re going to be bad on the pavement. It doesn’t really matter.”
On Tuesday, players played in a simulated scrimmage. This aided in coach’s decisions to weed out players that might perform well in drills, but not in game type situations.
“If you’re doing drills, you’re not really throwing hard so anybody can make contact with the ball or field a ground ball,” short stop, Tanner Houston, 11, said. “But in a game it’s harder fielding a ball off a bat that’s faster than a ball your coach would throw to you in drills.”
On Wednesday, players returned to the batting cages, where coaches made their final evaluations. The majority of the team has been announced, and both West and Houston are optimistic about the upcoming season. Both have been practicing outside of school, and look to be successful when the season comes. The team has lost pitcher Carlton Brown, and outfielders Jason Thompson and Zach Muscanere. However, they’ve added some new faces that hope to make an impact.
“I think this team can perform up to them [last years’ team],” Houston said. “Throughout our season we’ll have people from the JV move up and they’ll help us out a lot. So I feel we can make our run for the district championship.”
