51st article at the Independent

SPRING SPORTS PREVIEW: Canby baseball

CHRIS DRUMMOND cdrummond@marshallindependent.com

CANBY — The Canby Lancers baseball team had a rough season last year, only amassing two wins in 16 tries. This year Canby will look to bounce back with coach Nick Kockelman at the helm, who expects his team to be consistently competitive.

“[Our expectations are] to be more consistently competitive in each game,” Kockelman said. “We need to limit mistakes and not make multiple mistakes in an inning leading to extra runs for the opposing team.”

Some of the key returners to the team will be first baseman/pitcher Sawyer Drietz, catcher Liam MacArthur, and infielder/pitcher Evan Engesmoe. The Lancers have three seniors on the team, who are key players as well (Easton Anthony, Rylee Sigler, and Tyler Hiedeman). Kockelman, who is in his second year, spoke on his team’s strengths and areas of improvement for the upcoming season.

“We are a fast team that need to take advantage of speed on the bases,” Kockelman said. “On offense, we need to put the ball in play more to put pressure on the opposing defense and defensively, we have to make the plays to avoid giving up free bases.”

In their first couple of weeks of practices, Kockelman said they’ve been working on making the right adjustments at the plate as the at-bat progresses.

“We’ve been tweaking our swing and what our approach at the plate is depending on the count and different situations we’re in,” Kockelman said.

Kockelman also talked about what he was most looking forward to with the upcoming season.

“Getting outside and seeing the team figure out the attention to detail it takes to improve themselves as players and as a team,” he said. ” Once we figure that out we will compete and our level of play will continue to increase.”

The Lancers had their first couple of games postponed but will open the season today at RCW at 4:30 p.m.