Though the Juneau-Douglas High School baseball team\u2019s roster only includes two seniors this year, but the team believes it has the rising talent to make it out of the Southeast Conference and into the state tournament.<\/p>\n
Six returning starters and a large class of sophomores fill out the Crimson Bears\u2019 roster as they open their regular season with a doubleheader Monday at 4 and 7 p.m. against Petersburg High School.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re young and enthusiastic,\u201d coach Will Race said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got all the potential in the world, it\u2019s just their decision whether they want to be champions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Senior outfielder Alex Muir\u2019s enthusiasm resembled his coach\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have one of the best pitchers in the state right here,\u201d Muir said, pointing to his teammate, junior Bryce Swofford. \u201cI\u2019ve got a lot of confidence in him, and our infield, which is really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to Muir, the Crimson Bears other senior is newcomer Devin Williams, an outfielder, who both Muir and Swofford say has performed well in practice.<\/p>\n
Swofford, for his part, is striving for consistency this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have too many personal goals, but getting to state is one,\u201d Swofford said, adding that his focus is, \u201cplaying the same way for every single game: with intensity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears finished third in the state last year, and graduated four players, several of whom were pitchers in JDHS\u2019 starting rotation. The Crimson Bears look to replenish their pitching staff this season with the leading play of Swofford and their talented, but somewhat inexperienced, sophomore class.<\/p>\n
\u201cBryce (Swofford) is our leading pitcher. Our other pitchers are all sophomores, so it will be a good experience for them,\u201d Race said. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of the goal this season, to get enough experience going into the playoffs that everyone feels comfortable. All of the sophomore pitchers pitched last year but it was behind Bryce, Nathan Klein and Jacob Thibodeau.\u201d <\/p>\n
Klein and Thibodeau graduated last year.<\/p>\n
If JDHS is to make it to the state tournament, they\u2019ll have to pass Ketchikan High School, a senior-heavy team featuring the state\u2019s reigning Gatorade Player of the Year, pitcher Nathan Bonck. Ketchikan finished sixth in the state tournament last year, but the Kings are an early favorite to win the state title this season.<\/p>\n
As if Kayhi wasn\u2019t enough of a challenge, JDHS will have to contend with a young Thunder Mountain High School team who gave Ketchikan a scare last weekend, out-hitting the Kings in both of their opening weekend losses.<\/p>\n
JDHS doesn\u2019t plan on doing anything drastically different facing some stiff inter-conference competition, and believes in their team\u2019s defensive focus. With the return of long-time coach Jim Ayers, however, they\u2019ve made a few adjustments.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoach Ayers, he came up and has been helping us out a lot with our batting and just with our whole team philosophy,\u201d Muir said. \u201cHe\u2019s been switching things up and breaking things down for us. \u2026 Coach Ayers talks a lot about no one left behind, doing everything as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur plan every year is solid defense and solid pitching, and that\u2019s what we focus most of our practices around. We\u2019ve switched it up this year with hitting, we\u2019ve got a new plan, but we really focus on low errors, low scoring games,\u201d Race said.<\/p>\n
JDHS opens their season with games at 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. Monday against Petersburg. The Crimson Bears play Petersburg again at 6 p.m. Tuesday. All games are at Adair-Kennedy Field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Though the Juneau-Douglas High School baseball team\u2019s roster only includes two seniors this year, but the team believes it has the rising talent to make it out of the Southeast Conference and into the state tournament. Six returning starters and a large class of sophomores fill out the Crimson Bears\u2019 roster as they open their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30303"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}