In its last home game of the regular season and its senior night, the Mingus Union High School Marauders were defeated by the Prescott Badgers 12-7.
“I think the beginning killed us a lot,” senior Fernando Machado said. “We’ve come back from a pretty bad situation before. I was hoping we could do that again,but it didn’t happen.”
The Badgers scored seven runs in the first inning, while the Marauders scored none. Its first score was a home run by senior Kaden Pusl in the fourth inning, which scored two runs.
“It was pretty cool,” Pusl said. “I never really do that. Something to get the heart going.”
After the game, the team had a record of 12-12 with one tie after a game was canceled against the Greenway Demons on March 17.
Mingus was ranked 25th in the state’s 4A division. To make it to the play-in games, a team needs to be ranked No. 24 or higher.
The Marauders played an away game, its last of theregular season, after press time on Monday, April 27, against the No. 22-ranked Mesquite Wildcats.
Monday was also the final day of the regular season for every team in Arizona. The standings after then will be what determines which teams get to play in for the playoffs.
Machado said the team’s been paying together basically all their lives.
“It’s great just to be out here with them,” he said. “Because at that point, you’re just with friends playing the sport.”
Practices have been going smoothly, too, Head Coach Erick Quesada said. Mostly, they’ve been focusing on the baseball fundamentals.
“I don’t think I ever had a bad day at practice,” Machado said. “Every now and then we have to get straightened out, but we usually pick ourselves back up. Practice is always fun.”
Because they’ve known each other for so long, senior Derek Alvarez said it’s like a family; they spend a lot of time off the field together, too.
“We all try and do a lot of team-bonding,” Alvarez said. “We like to go fishing, play whiffle ball … that really is what brings us together. I feel like when we’re on the baseball field, you just need to show up physically, instead of just being around each other, being there for each other.”
“I’m just really proud of who they are,” Quesada said. “And I know that they’re going to do amazing things in life, especially the seniors. We’ve had a really pretty good year, and I’m just hoping that they continue to build … heading into the next year.”
The team is overall pretty young, he said. There are only four seniors out of the 12 varsity players.
