By TRACY WATSON

For The TImes Leader

CONNORVILLE – As with a lot of teams coming off a lost season due to the pandemic, Buckeye Local’s 2021 baseball team will be an inexperienced group, with only three kids having any previous varsity playing team, with a first-year Head Coach in Jeffery Patrick.

The Panthers were expecting big things in 2020 before the season was cancelled, which also ended the high school playing careers of seven seniors. But while this will be a relatively new squad taking the field this season, Patrick believes this group of kids has the ability to get the job done.

“We have 31 kids come out, which is a pretty big team,” Patrick said. “And we will split them up between varsity and junior varsity because we don’t want to cut anyone and start losing kids. Overall, I have been pretty happy about how practice has been going and while we have some younger kids we are going to have to grow together as a program it’s pretty exciting.”

There is one senior and a pair of juniors with varsity playing time that are going to need to be the cornerstones of the roster. They include senior shortstop/pitcher Alan Burkett and juniors Matt Scott (catcher, pitcher) and Ethan McHugh (1B, OF, P). A big addition will be that of sophomore Trey Hoover, who can play just about anywhere in the infield and will be highly utilized as a utility player.

Senior Nick Sipes is another player who can be utilized at various infield spots as well as catcher while junior Justin Driscoll will be a corner infielder and classmate Corey Olinski can catch and will be used as infield depth.

Seniors Cole Still, who could also be used to pitch, Hayden Taylor and Tyler Donahue are all competing for playing time in the outfield as well as sophomore Dylan Palmer and freshmen Jacob Berry and Skylar Ebright. Both Palmer and Berry can also pitch, and Berry is someone that Patrick says they want to find as many at bats for him as possible. Senior Alexio Morales could also see playing time.

Freshmen Gavyn Romanyak could be used at first base or designated hitter while Noah Kourim will compete for time on the mound. Rounding out the roster for depth will be juniors Jimmy Hornyak and Hunter Roush.

Scott and Burkett will be the go-to pitchers in the rotation while the rest will be by committee and will include McHue, Olinski, Romanyak, Berry and Kourim.