Aware of the spring season fast approaching, the high school boy’s baseball team spent the winter training and preparing for the season ahead.
After the team failed to make it to playoffs last season for the first time in five years, they’ve been working to make it to playoffs this season. With the loss of a handful of seniors from last year, the team has adapted and changed to fit the new group of guys.
The baseball team has been practicing throughout the winter, as opposed to just starting now in early spring. This is something that most sports teams have started doing, as the off-season can be one of the biggest downfalls for athletes. Their practices started all the way back in late November. These earlier practices mostly consisted of conditioning and strength building. The start of the season will show if their extra time and effort was worthwhile.
Unfortunately, their season was not able to start as soon as anticipated. Multiple scrimmage games were scheduled to be played before the regular season begun. The home scrimmage game against Western Beaver was supposed to be held on March 11 but had to be cancelled due to poor field conditions.
“We couldn’t play because the fields were too soft,” Senior Aaron McSorley said.
The boys didn’t have much luck with the second scrimmage either. It was supposed to be hosted by Hopewell on March 14, but poor field conditions yet again kept them from playing. Hopewell had recently renovated their field, but the new infield was having drainage problems. You can’t play baseball with a watery, muddy infield.
Finally a streak of decent weather came about, and the baseball team was able to play one of their scrimmage games. This game took place at Pullman Park on Sunday, March 16 against the Allegheny/Butler team. The purpose of this game was really to evaluate the newer players and get a feel for where the team currently stands.
It was “mostly getting a gage for the younger kids,” McSorley said.
The scrimmage game ended with Freedom down by 10 runs, largely due to the fact that the opposing team scored eight runs against them in one inning. The Varsity team, however, only lost their game by five runs.
A scrimmage game was rescheduled for March 20, Freedom being defeated 9-1 by West Allegheny. The first regular season baseball game was scheduled for March 21, but was cancelled and rescheduled due to inclimate weather conditions. The game was played the next day, Saturday March 22. Freedom was defeated by Valley High School, 14-4.