By Clarissa Olson Posted March 18, 2018
On the weekend of March 3, Varsity baseball participated in a pre-season tournament in Reno. They lost to Reno 22-0, Reed 10-0, Truckee 15-5, and Enterprise 8-7, before beating Colfax 7-6. With the weather lately, the outcome was expected.
“I figured we’d be a little rusty,” said coach Andy Harmon. “We were outside for I think about two days of practice before we went to that tournament, so I wasn’t surprised that it took us a little bit of time to get our legs under us and get comfortable on the baseball field.”
The tournament was a rather difficult start to the season.
“For the first couple of days, we were going up against some really good schools,” Harmon said. “Reno is one of the best teams in the 4A. Wren pitched really well for us in that game. We made a lot of early-season mistakes and a lot of errors. We played pretty well against Reed. Jake pitched really well for us, but as you can see from the score, our offense really didn’t get going. In the game with Truckee, we played a little bit better. When we got to the game against Enterprise and then against Colfax, we started playing a little better. We started playing Lowry baseball.”
The team soon started to get comfortable with the program.
“The first two days they didn’t really know how to compete and how to get after it,” said Harmon. “We had a couple of Team meetings, and we talked about what our expectations were. They came together on the last day and figured out what Lowry baseball is all about. We started competing, and we did on those last two games.”
Their last game against Colfax was a key step for the team.
“I would say the best game of the tournament was our last game against Colfax,” said Harmon. “Even though that was a loss, that was the game we kind of put it all together. They were one of the best teams in the tournament, and we fought them right to the end. It was a back-and-forth game. We played much better defense and hit the ball. We ran the bases well. Colfax is where it kind of all came together for us.”
Now that they’ve gotten going, the young team is ready to start picking up speed by starting from the beginning.
“Coming out of the tournament,” said Harmon, “we started working on fundamental baseball; all of the basics. We’re just a young team this year; we’ve got only six returning Varsity players who are also very young. So it’s just fundamental baseball and learning to play at a faster speed than varsity is what most of these kids played last year at a JV level. After the tournament, we know what our best lineups are. Now it’s about playing the teams that are our equals and that you’re competing for playoff spots with.”
