Baseball: Hornets open against Lone Pine on Monday

Beatty this year has a new head baseball coach, James Robertson, who has been with the high school for a couple of years now.

Robertson teaches special education at the high school. Four years ago Robertson taught at Beatty for two years. During that time, he was the middle school football coach and in his second year he was the high school coach. He coached baseball under Brian Hayes, who now coaches for Pahrump.

The assistant coach will be Mark Henderson.

This year the baseball team will play in a new league.

Division IV was broken up into two leagues, a central league composed of Beatty, Tonopah, Round Mountain and Spring Mountain and a Southern League, composed of Pahranagat Valley, Indian Springs, Sandy Valley, and Beaver Dam. The league games start in April, which are the last three games of the season.

The NIAA said this league change was made at the request of the Division IV coaches who stated the main reason for the change was travel time.

According to Robertson he has four returning players, Nick Zamora, Jacob Handy, Josh Harper and Elias Oliva.

Senior Handy will play left field, junior Harper will play center, Oliva will play first base, Zamora will play shortstop and maybe catch and pitch.

Junior Maggie Cathcart will play second base and junior Hugo Mendoza will play third. Cathcart played last year but just didn’t start. Sophomore Matt Reetz will play catcher.

Lindsay Gross will be coming back, but he is not eligible at the moment. He also pitched last year. The team has 20 players out this year.

For Robertson, baseball is a simple game. The game comes down to pitching and throwing strikes. He said to win, all he needs is a pitcher that can throw over the plate and get strikes.

“The pitcher doesn’t have to be fancy,” he said. “Eliminate the walks. Just throw three pitches, a fastball, curve and a decent change up.”

He said he will start with just three pitchers but will try out everybody to see if they can get it over the plate. One such player is Francisco Cardenas.

“This guy is a righty who throws with a sidearm so his ball has wicked break to it,” Robertson said. “I might actually put him on the mound for the first couple of innings to see how he does.”

To get to the playoffs with the new format Beatty has to finish in the top two of their league. This means they must beat Tonopah or Round Mountain and beat Spring Mountain.

The Hornets will play its first game at home against Lone Pine, which is on March 9 at 3 p.m.