With a solid hardwood season complete at Louisville High School, the focus now shifts to the diamond for the Wildcats as the team is getting set for the start of the season.
LHS, like most everyone else, is dealing with the weather this time of year. Head coach Kylie Ming and his assistants have had to fight through an outfield flooded in water for most of the last few weeks and they’ve spent most of their time in the covered batting cages as well as on the infield where they’ve been able to field ground balls and catch fly balls.
Ming gave a lot of credit to assistants Eric Marshall, Dicenzo Miller and Newlie Long for the work they’ve put in with the players to make sure that they’re learning the game and staying active.
“Rain and baseball go together around here these days,” Ming said. “You can just about bet that when baseball season starts, so does the raining. Luckily, we have not had too many days where we just could not do anything. The biggest fight is to keep the guys interested and not burnt out on having to do so much of the same things.”
The Wildcats will have four seniors on this year’s team and a lot of talent in the field defensively and on the mound. Ming is interested to see how his team performs as they put pitchers like juniors John Mark Wallace, Ty Cooper and Kaliyah Coburn and sophomores Isaiah Hardin, Jace Hudspeth and Orian Evans on the mound.
“We are very young this year, but I am excited about our pitching staff and defense,” Ming said. “Once we get the nerves and jitters under control, I can no wait to watch our defense play. We are not going to be overpowering on the mound but we are going to stay around the strike zone and let the defense play.”
As far as hitting is concerned, there’s some room to grow.
Hudspeth is expecting big things from seniors Dre Shumaker and Roper Stoots as well as Evans, Cooper, Hudspeth and Coburn, but he needs to see consistency one through nine in the order. It’s helped that his players have spent a lot of time in the batting cages, but they’ll need to see live pitching more to get adjusted.
“Hitting is a challenge that we will have, especially starting out early this year. Most of the time, pitchers are always ahead of the hitters, but we will continue to put the work in and get the bats going. Staying focused for a full game and fighting through adversity during the game is always a challenge for any team.”
The Wildcats are starting out with a challenging schedule right away. They will play Caledonia on the road on Wednesday at 6 p.m. before going on the road to play at Neshoba Central on Friday at 7 p.m.
