Junior Varsity Welcomes Newcomers and Starts Their Season Off Strong

By Alice Kauffman (9)
alice.kauffman@fwcsstudents.org

April 28, 2023

Spring brings many things, one of it’s finest, is baseball. For many of you freshmen, it might be your first time exploring South Side sports. The best place for newcomers to begin is JV. This is also a great place for any players that want more practice, playing time, and have their positions filled on the Varsity team. 

“Usually during the first year, you see a huge growth between them all. A kid might grow from not even being able to throw a baseball, to understanding the basics and rules of the game. There’s tons of growth between the younger guys, and our energy level is high,” says Mr. Blake Blaker.

Rather than the other coaches that helped out with conditioning during March, the Head Coach is Blaker. He focuses on not only the skill of each student and teachings, but also watching their grades, and making sure the term Student Athlete is remembered.

“With each game you gain more and more experience and there’s more and more situations, from each game you learn from the previous ones, what you did wrong and what you should work on. Some skill comes from natural ability, but I’d say the majority of the time it comes from how many years you have, and how much time you have playing,” says Blaker.

This season has been short, because they started their games in early April. So far, there’s been four games, and they’re hoping for their first win soon. 

“The team is definitely getting better, with slow progression, but that's okay, because we live and learn. Everyone is learning the rules of baseball, a lot of people haven’t played before. We have lots of potential that we haven't reached though,” said Abram Ratajczak (9).

They focus primarily on practice, so that they can improve their skills and team bonding as quickly as possible. Practice happens 6 days out of the week, and if a day doesn’t have practice, it’s because time is taken up by a game. 

Not only are there lots of people who are new to the sport, but there’s also a huge group of grade 9 boys that had their first time playing in March. 

“This is my second year, since I started playing last year. I feel like the team is better this year because of leadership and less fighting like we used to do last year,” says Dontal Glaspy (10).

“We’re not all like besties or anything, but there’s like little friend groups within the team. We can all support each other. We have varsity players playing sometimes, because we need more students to help out,” says Ratajcak. 

They’ve worked extremely hard through the past few weeks doing their best, curating their communication, and forming connections with their coaches. Keep an eye out Archers, the schedules are always changing, and watching a game would be fun. Go support your classmates!

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