After back-to-back state championships, the Elkhorn North baseball team is forming a fourth team, as compared to three teams in previous years. Last year, the program consisted of a reserve team, a JV team, and a Varsity team. Each team won well over 50% of their games, with a reserve record of 35-17-2, JV with a record of 34-27, and the Varsity with a stellar record of 60-17.
The season ended with varsity placing first in class B for the second consecutive year, the JV took home third, and the reserve finished in fourth. This tremendous success led the coaches and administration to decide that it is time for an expansion.
This new team will be somewhat in between levels, specifically the JV and reserve teams. They will play over 20 games, including half of their games at the JV level, and the other half at a class A reserve schedule.
The new team is coached by Tony Kresnik, and consists of 14 players, all freshmen. They will play 20 games over the course of seven weeks in the spring. Although the two teams are made of freshman, the reserve Kresnick team is technically higher in the program than the freshman team coached by Mason Rogers. Players who dominate at the Rogers level will be moved up to the Kresnik team, rather than the JV team coached by Nick Cicirello. Players who stand out at the Kresnik level will then move up from there to the JV team.
This addition will have many positive effects on individual players, the teams, and the program as a whole. It will provide many opportunities to younger, maybe less skilled players to work on their craft and become the best baseball player they can be for their team. This will also benefit the program, because although the team holds tryouts every year, it is extremely difficult to effectively examine all of the 80+ players who try out in just three days. There may be a great amount of missed opportunities in players that, having been evaluated for a bit longer, could have made a team. With a fourth team, the amount of players cut will decrease by almost half, leading to decreased losses in talent.
When more players have an opportunity to showcase their skills over an entire season will strengthen the program, leading to more success at the varsity level. Giving players a full season to improve and display their capabilities will give the coaches a bigger sample size to decide which of the players have more potential, and go from there. This will lead to the better players staying in the program, improving every team, not just the varsity. Stronger players lead to a stronger team, and stronger teams lead to more success for the program.
With any major change, there is likely bound to be a few obstacles to overcome. With so many players in the program, there will likely be space and resource issues. Even in previous years, the reserve team had to practice on the softball field, which isn’t a bad place to practice, but isn’t the same as a full-sized baseball field. A full sized high school field is traditionally a little above 300 feet to the left and right field poles and around 400 feet to center field. The softball field is much smaller, as the left and right field fences are around 200 feet, and center is around 220. It also lacks a grass infield, which every high school baseball field has. This meant that the team was unable to throw or do batting practice on the field, and they instead went down the hill to throw on the practice football field.
The coaches will have to decide how they will divide up the space, as well as their own time that they spend with the players. With the increase in players, the coaches will have their hands full with giving attention and advice to all the 60+ players. To assist with this, the team has a surplus of team managers. The ten managers will play a pivotal role in relieving the coaches of some of the time-consuming everyday tasks, like setting up the machine for batting practice, or bringing the balls from the shed.
Another possible issue may be scheduling and field time to fit games at all four levels. Throughout the season, it is common for the Varsity and JV team to hold double headers, in which the two teams play back to back, with the varsity normally playing first and the JV following behind. Now, with another reserve team, they will have to play back to back with Rogers reserve team, which may or may not be doable depending on the time of the game and where it is being played.
The program hosted a parents meeting on March fourth, for all the parents and players that made a team for the spring season. There, head baseball coach Anthony Dunn spoke about the struggle to find a full season worth of games.
“Finding games for every team is always tricky. The fourth team will make it even harder, because not every school has the same number of teams as us, or plays the same amount of games.” Dunn said.
This change will definitely have a huge impact on the program over the next few years. There will definitely be issues that arise, but that happens with every program, regardless of the amount of teams they have. The most important part is to give more young athletes an opportunity to play the game that they love and show their capabilities.
