Hastings High has not had a baseball team since 1942, but has one this year. The season started on March 16 and ends on May 2.
Blake Marquardt is the Hastings High baseball team’s new head coach, but he is not new to coaching. Marquardt previously coached at Hastings College and for Hastings Legion teams. Coaching the legion teams has helped him to already know a lot of the players on the team. Some of that experience together can possibly help this team win games.
“There are several aspects to coaching a successful team,” Marquardt said. “I have several goals for the year; my first goal is to create a culture for the players to understand what it takes to win. My other goal for the year is to create a team built on trust. Each day we talk about how we need to trust each other. Players trusting the coach, coaches trusting the players and players trusting players.”
These players have not all played together before so trust is a key factor for this team. Despite the limited amount of time the baseball team has played together for Hastings High, there are very high expectations for the team.
“I expect us to go to state this year,” senior Vinny Schmidt said, “I’ve played with a lot of these guys that are on the team and we have had success in the summer with playing Class A legion baseball. Now that we are in Class B for spring ball, it gives us an edge.”
Playing a varsity sport is extremely hard, especially on a team with high expectations, but there are still four freshman who made the team and can have an impact on the season. There are actually as many freshmen on the team this year as there are seniors. Freshmen can also learn from the older players.
“Being a freshman on the team is a completely different role then I am used to,” freshman Mike Boeve said, “I look up to the juniors and seniors and see how they carry themselves and how they act in practice. Although I am a freshman, I do have several years of experience playing baseball at a high level.”
Practice is going to be very important for underclassmen and upperclassmen in terms of preparing for the regular season and the postseason. As almost all athletes know, practice makes perfect. A new team can have a hard time adjusting to games if they don’t have experience together.
“To help the team is just be a good teammate and try to play to the best of my ability everyday,” Schmidt said, “Obviously, if we want to win, we have to be able to play well and I know myself and everyone else will have to do that. I have to practice really hard everyday in order to play well in games so that’s how I will do that.”
One of the main benefits of having a baseball team is it gives more students an opportunity to play a spring sport. Lots of students who are on the baseball team didn’t play a spring sport before, and likely wouldn’t play one if not for the HHS baseball team.
“I did not participate in other spring sports before baseball,” Boeve said, “My dad and I would practice after school in the spring before we had baseball. I think that students play baseball because they either like baseball more or they want to try something new.”
Although baseball gives students an opportunity to play a spring sport, it also takes players away from some other spring sports. That was one of the main arguments made against HHS having a baseball team when it was debated by the school board. Even so, the students playing baseball obviously would prefer to have a team rather than not having one.
“I think it does take away some kids that were track or golf athletes before baseball was here, but a lot of those kids that decided to play baseball instead of continuing with those other sports really wanted baseball to happen here,” Schmidt said, “A lot of them play baseball in the summer and talking with a lot of them made it obvious that they wanted to have spring baseball as well.”
Hastings High played their first game on Thursday, March 16, and they played their first home game on Saturday, March 18 at Duncan Field. The final regular season game is May 2. Districts are May 5-9 and the Nebraska State baseball tournament is May 13-18.
“It’s unfortunate that baseball will take some athletes away from other spring sports,” Marquardt said, “But this is a great opportunity for students to either continue with a sport they love or even try a new sport.”
