This season will be a challenge both mentally and physically for the Hopewell Freshman baseball team.
This team for the Vikings is made up of both 8th and 9th graders but mostly 8th graders. However the teams they’ll be playing against will be 9th graders.
This difference in age will be challenging so will the fact that they’ll be playing against some of the biggest and most talented districts in the WPIAL such as Seneca Valley, North Allegheny, Pine-Richland, Moon, Montour, etc.
I’m not bringing this up to use as excuse but just pointing it out to be fair to the kids and pointing out the reality of what they’ll be facing this season.
The Vikings traveled to Seneca Valley tonight for their season opener and the Raiders came away with a 10-0 no-hit win (5 innings).
Despite the loss, I’m going to focus on the positives in the game because despite the loss, you can always find some good things that happened to remember and build on.
The biggest positive to take from tonight was the way starter Cam Hoth battled on the mound. After having trouble finding the strike zone and having 6 errors behind him, Hoth settled down and pitched a tremendous last 3 innings, allowing only 1 run.
It was a gutsy performance by Hoth because of the way he stay composed despite the game circumstances. It could have been easy to lose it mentally after the 2nd inning and trailing 9-0. But Hoth stay composed and got better every inning.
Despite giving up 10 runs (only 4 earned), Hoth allowed only 6 hits.
Despite the high number of errors, the Hopewell defenders did make a handful of nice plays in the field.
2nd baseman Ethan Adams was Hopewell’s best defender, making 4 plays in the field. 1st baseman Andrew Arzberger tracked down a couple of plays in foul territory, left fielder Reed Budavich ran down a deep fly out in left and Luke Vukovcan was solid defensively behind the plate, including catching a high pop up in foul territory.
At the plate, Hopewell couldn’t get anything going at the plate, although Arzberger and Vukovcan did make contact both times at the plate.
Game One is out of the way and it can only get better from here! Next up, a trip to North Allegheny next Wednesday.