The runway is full once again for the Vauxhall Academy of Baseball Jets’ hangar, as the new crop of players is already in full swing to begin the school year.
“It’s the same as always, the same 21 guys,” said Les McTavish, head coach of the Vauxhall Academy of Baseball Jets, with how many players will line the pine for 2010-2011.
“We’re about middle of the road as far as age breakdown is concerned, we have 14 Grade 12 and seven Grade 11s. We have 13 new guys, so it’s your typical amount of rollover.”
Until the team actually hits the diamond in full-mode game play, which starts Sept. 7 after a couple of intersquad games, predicting the power department is a crapshoot, but McTavish gave some early insights.
“As a group we are not going to have the power numbers we had last year. We had a lot of pop in the middle of the order, especially last year. But doing a synopsis, two years ago I said we didn’t have any power and that’s when we had all the records, so who knows,” said McTavish. “But, looking at it right now, we will run better than we have the last couple of years and we’ll be strong on the mound if we stay healthy. We do have a balanced hitting attack, but not a lot of homerun guys. Most importantly we have a bunch of great athletes, which makes it easier to figure out from there.”
The first lineup tweaks for game play will happen this Tuesday when the Vauxhall Academy of Baseball Jets host the Prairie Baseball Academy at 1:30 p.m. at Jets Stadium as part of school spirit activities for the week.
“The elementary, the junior high and high school will also be dismissed from class to come out to the ball park and we’ll have a rock band playing. It’s going to be kind of neat with a school spirit type of idea,” said McTavish. “We are always looking at ways for innovative initiatives to get people involved and we have a few other things on the horizon.”