Baseball Begins by Bradley Moorer
This week marks the start of spring sports at Saugatuck High School. All the teams have begun practice, meaning a new athletic season is underway. For many, that could mean track, soccer, or softball, but to some, baseball season has begun.
Surprisingly, the weather’s reputation of being volatile in the Michigan spring has not come to pass in the opening week of baseball. This means that for the first time in quite a while, the first week of practice has been held outdoors. This bodes well heading into the season as the team needs as many reps outside as they can get. As long as weather allows, the practices will remain outside.
The team this year on both the JV and Varsity level is seeing an influx of players, going from having minimal underclassmen, unable to field a JV team, to 33 kids between both programs and having to hire several new assistant coaches in order to manage them all. The 3rd year head coach, Evan Czarnecki, an alumni of Saugatuck High School, seems hopeful that this season will have a much better outcome than last year since the number of kids and their skill levels have elevated over the off-season. Off-season work has been big for this year's team in the course of improvement. Starting as far back as Christmas, many of the upperclassmen and some of the younger players have been frequenting these workouts and have been seeing leaps and bounds in their progress to be the best player they can be.
The team looks to overcome their struggles from the previous season, losing most of their games and only winning a handful. Utilizing their improved skills and the teamwork built from previous years, the program looks forward to having a promising year and not repeating past mistakes. The main issue with the team in previous years was age: most of the players were underclassmen who were young and inexperienced; now that they have aged and improved, they seek to build upon all those years of ‘learning the hard way’. They want to capitalize upon the improvements that they made for both themselves and the team.
Surprisingly, the weather’s reputation of being volatile in the Michigan spring has not come to pass in the opening week of baseball. This means that for the first time in quite a while, the first week of practice has been held outdoors. This bodes well heading into the season as the team needs as many reps outside as they can get. As long as weather allows, the practices will remain outside.
The team this year on both the JV and Varsity level is seeing an influx of players, going from having minimal underclassmen, unable to field a JV team, to 33 kids between both programs and having to hire several new assistant coaches in order to manage them all. The 3rd year head coach, Evan Czarnecki, an alumni of Saugatuck High School, seems hopeful that this season will have a much better outcome than last year since the number of kids and their skill levels have elevated over the off-season. Off-season work has been big for this year's team in the course of improvement. Starting as far back as Christmas, many of the upperclassmen and some of the younger players have been frequenting these workouts and have been seeing leaps and bounds in their progress to be the best player they can be.
The team looks to overcome their struggles from the previous season, losing most of their games and only winning a handful. Utilizing their improved skills and the teamwork built from previous years, the program looks forward to having a promising year and not repeating past mistakes. The main issue with the team in previous years was age: most of the players were underclassmen who were young and inexperienced; now that they have aged and improved, they seek to build upon all those years of ‘learning the hard way’. They want to capitalize upon the improvements that they made for both themselves and the team.