Beatty High School baseball is underway. The first game was a learning game against the Pahrump Valley Trojans junior varsity team where the Hornets lost 15-3.
Beatty then took 2-3 of their last three games. They played at Sandy Valley last Friday and split, winning one game 15-10. On Tuesday, the Hornets beat Adelson School 17-11.
Beatty Coach Leo Verzilli was happy with the two wins.
“I was a bit surprised that we pulled off a win against Sandy Valley, but my team worked hard. If we were to get more hits throughout the batting lineup, we would win more games,” Verzilli said.
Verzilli said his team is still under construction, or a work in progress.
“We are very young and we have eight kids that have never played before. It’s going to be a big learning curve. They learned a couple of things today, they will learn a couple of more next week and some more after that. We don’t really have anything set on the field. We only have only two real starters coming back, Jake Zamora and Luis Flores. Zamora plays shortstop and he pitches. Flores is behind the plate,” Verzilli explained.
Verzilli said he is moving people around and trying them at various positions.
It’s a rebuilding year and we lost all our kids last year,” he said. “A lot of the same kids that played football and basketball are out this year. We have a lot of three-sport athletes. We have two kids just playing baseball. There are about 6 freshmen. Wyatt Henry is out pitching. Elias Oliva is at second and Henry is also at first. We really have zero experience in the outfield.”
Verzilli said there are 18 athletes out for baseball and almost 50 out for track, which gives him enough players to move around.
“It’s about 65 kids playing sports out of 100,” he said.
This week the Trojans take on the always tough Tonopah Muckers, who have not lost a game to date. Last week they swept the Spring Mountain Eagles, beating them 12-2 and 8-1.
Muckers Coach Clark Jewett said his team wins because of its superb pitching and is confident about his chances against the Hornets.
“If our pitching continues to get better every week we will just be that much better against Beatty,” Jewett said. Tonopah, whose current record is 5-0-1 (League: 2-0-0), has an additional advantage over the Hornets: at this point, Jewett’s team has six games under his belt and they have only three.