The Camp Verde Cowboys baseball team is still working hard following its first home game, which it lost 11-3 against the Chino Valley Cougars on Thursday, March 12.
While the Cougars had a heavy lead in the first half of the game, 11-1 by the bottom of the fifth inning, the Cowboys made two more runs and the Cougars score stayed for the rest of the game.
The players practice five days a week, except for when they have a game, and have been in full swing since January.
Sophomore Victor Tahin, No. 23, said preseason practices in the fall were about twice a week.
“In practice, we do our warm ups, we’ll do stretches, we’ll run,” junior Hayden Melton, No. 11, said. “We throw normally, start just light and simple, escalating the long toss.
“We have defensive days. We have offensive days.”
On defensive days, the athletes will be paired up or do solo drills, practice the basics of playing in the field. Offensive days are for working on hitting techniques and practicing them.
Head Coach Lucas Hicks said the boys need to work on defense overall, but hitting is pretty good.
“Typically, at the end of each game, we out hit the teams,” he said. “The kids are doing the work. They’re progressing, just little by little. That’s kind of our mentality right now, is working on the things that are killing us and leaning on our strengths.”
“We have a big group of juniors that has been playing together since they were little, and that typically helps,” Hicks said. There are only two seniors on the team, he said.
Tahin, said he started playing baseball when he was really young and could join a T-Ball league.
“Since I was about 4 or 5 years old,” he said.
Melton began about the same time.
“We played a little bit [together] in Little League, in middle school and high school, for sure,” Tahin said.
He said his goal for this year is to get in the cage to practice batting and “work as a team and come together ore.”
“Defensively, I played well. I played organized. I was calm, collected,” Melton said of the March 12 game. “Offensively, so I struggled a little at the plate.”
The Cowboys hosted a game on Tuesday, March 17, against the Northland Prep Spartans, after press time.
Before then, it was ranked No. 6 in the 2A central region with a record of 1-9.
Its next home game will be against the No. 5 ranked Madison Highland Heat on Monday, March 23, at 3:45 p.m.
Following the three-hour game on March 12, every team member could be seen helping ready the field for its next use, sweeping the dirt, wetting and covering the mound and storing the plates.
Home Game Schedule
- Monday, March 23, at 3:45 p.m. vs. Madison Highland
- Monday, March 30, at 3:45 p.m. vs. Glendale Prep
- Thursday, April 2, at 3:45 p.m. vs. Scottsdale Christian
- Tuesday, April 7, at 3:45 p.m. vs. Fountain Hills
- Monday, April 13, at 3:45 p.m. vs. Phoenix Christian
- Tuesday, April 21, at 5 p.m. vs. Scottsdale Prep
