Greenwood baseball team is young and inexperienced starting this season
Last year, the Greenwood baseball team was largely compromised of seniors, leaving many upcoming underclassmen fewer opportunities to get some playing time in. Now those same underclassmen are the starters on the Indians baseball team this year, a team short on experience but with a desire to win.
Three seniors make up the returning members of last year’s baseball team, with the rest of the team consisting of players from freshmen to juniors who did not see the field last year. That lack of experience is the team’s biggest weakness this year, said coach Kent Hinker.
“We’re very young,” he said. “We have three returning seniors and the rest have not seen the field. It’s like starting three seniors and six freshmen, not that all of our starters are freshmen, but their experience level is similar. We had so many seniors last year and we didn’t have enough numbers to have a JV team so a lot of those kids never got a chance to play.”
Although the team does not have the same experience that last year’s team had due to the number of seniors on the squad, Hinker said training the boys to do well this year is not an impossible task. Due to the cancellation of games because of the weather, he said they have had plenty of time to work on the basics and getting everybody up to speed. It is instead the lack of games that is hurting the team at the moment.
“Our game plan is to improve by the week and make improvements at each game,” he said. “But you can’t do certain situations or practices like it is in the game. When we have games, that is when we are actually able to look at what we need to correct in order to improve. We probably won’t be able to play again for a couple weeks which makes it difficult to know what you need to work on.”
Members of the Greenwood baseball team are (front from left) Kody Johnson, Gage Ludovic, Peyton Ellis, Caden Arteman (back), Kynton La Mont, James Durrstein, Mason Learman, Xander Hinker, Fletcher Bredlau, Rogan Travis and Ryver Glynn.
For now, Hinker said the team is working on the small details that they can in this lull of activity to try to do what they can to prepare for their next games.
“We have been doing some maintenance in practice,” he said. “I don’t want to say nit-picky, but the smaller things you need to work on, the details. Being ready. We have also been working on their approach to batting. With the new young kids they need to learn how to get into the right mindset when they go up to bat so that they are confident they will hit it.”
On the defensive side of the ball diamond, Hinker said the lack of playing experience will probably hit them hardest here. All the boys have been chosen for their positions on the field, but strengths are laid out towards the center of the field, leaving the outside bases and wings of the outfield vulnerable.
“I think we will be alright up the middle,’ he said. “The corner positions and first and third bases are the spots that will have to work on.”
Pitching is expected to be solid for the Indians during the season, with three boys having some previous experience. Due to injury, Hinker said one will remain questionable for the beginning of the season but hopes to have all three ready to go when the games begin to pile up.
“We had three kids ready to pitch this year but one of their arms is hurt so we have to work with two right now,” he said. “Three pitchers is ideal so we are hoping to be able to get him back in the last half of the year.”
Looking at how he believes Greenwood is situated among the other conference teams, Hinker said he would not be surprised to see what he called a “dogfight” among most of the teams for third place, Greenwood included.
“Columbus is going to be tough, but they still have a good team,” he said. “Neillsville always seems to have the numbers for a team, they have a larger pool of students to pull from than the rest of us so they will probably also do better. Those two teams I see as being the top two in the conference. I don’t know how the other teams are, but I know they’re all battling with low numbers. I imagine that it will be us, Loyal, Owen-Withee and Spencer that will be fighting for that third spot. It will be a dogfight for third for the rest of the teams.”
The Greenwood baseball team will be led by seniors Fletcher Bredlau, Xander Hinker and Mason Learman. Juniors on the team are Gage Ludovic, Rogan Travis, Ryver Glynn and Caden Arteman. Kody Johnson is the only sophomore on the team while four freshmen fill out the lineup: Kynton La Mont, James Durrstein, Peyton Ellis and Adrian Nitz.
