As the winter sports season wraps up, and March springs ahead, America’s favorite pastime is in the windup. The weather is slowly getting warmer, and unfortunately more windy and rainy, but that is how you know that baseball season is at your front door step. After the Kings’ loss to Oak Hill in the sectional semi-final at Wabash High School, it is now time for people to walk away from winter sports and jump into their spring sports, Track & Field, Golf, and America’s Pastime: Baseball.
When it comes to new things, predictions are always bound to be a factor. Coming into this new season, people are predicting who will step up and be a standout player, or people will predict how a team will perform after graduating a group of seniors and having to find a new lineup. Fortunately for the Kings, the predictions are about the same as last year, if not better. The Kings only graduated one senior last year, so they will be returning eight starters, resulting in a very experienced varsity team. The experience that this team will have is likely to bring a light to many people’s eyes in what they see of the baseball program, as the past few seasons saw more inexperienced teams. When asked about how the team hopes to perform this year, Head Coach Marschand, said, “The team will be as good as the senior leadership and player accountability wants them to be.” Along with Coach Marshcand’s prediction of how the team will perform, junior infielder and pitcher, Owen Cotner-Graves, expressed his prediction as well, stating, “With it being my second year on varsity, I expect to be more well-rounded at the plate and more consistent on the mound. As a team, I expect us to have a good year with such a big senior and junior class, which can help us pull out some of the closer games we were unable to do last year. We have no lack of experience this year since we are returning eight guys.” Coach Marschand has high expectations for this senior heavy and junior loaded team as well, where he stated, “There are high expectations with having the opportunity to work with such outstanding young men on and off the athletic fields. Will they roll up their sleeves and work for a championship, or will they display the mentality of entitlement?” To say both Coach Marschand, and assistant coach, Coach Ford, are amped for this season is an understatement. This group of seniors has always been a great group of players, and with their varsity experience combined with Coach Marschand’s forty-five years of coaching and Coach Ford’s thirty-five years of coaching baseball, this team is looking at having a great season.
As a senior, this final season of high school baseball will be bittersweet to not just me, but my fellow seniors as well. People always say “Time flies by when you’re having fun,” and it really does. These past three seasons of baseball have flown by faster than any other, and this final season will be full of cherished memories and moments. Senior infielder, Wade Tocco, has some games and moments he is looking forward to more than he ever has, since it is also his senior year. Tocco said, “I am excited for many games this season, but I am most excited for when we play University High School and Rochester. University is a great program and they have some Division-One players on their team, so it will be fun to compete against them. The Rochester game will also be fun, too, because they are one of the best teams in our conference (The TRC), so hopefully we will be playing them for first place in the conference.” While Tocco’s favorite moments he is looking forward to this season are the games, Cotner-Graves’s favorite moments he is looking forward to are going out to eat after the games with his teammates. Not only is cherishing our last high school season important to us seniors, but leaving a legacy that people will remember for ages is also important. When asked about what kind of legacy Wade and his senior teammates want to leave behind, he said, “I think as a group, we want to win a sectional championship and beyond that, and I think, if we can set that bar for the underclassmen, we could get this program back on the track it was on before the coronavirus changed the tide of this program.”
As our seniors’ athletic careers are coming to an end, we are looking to make the most out of what we have left, whether it is on or off the field. This team is also looking to have a great season this year and “living up to the hype” that has been set for them in previous years. Be sure to head out to the baseball field to see your Kings dominate on the diamond!
