Youth gains experience

Published 4:22 pm Wednesday, April 11, 2018

Kenston Forest School’s varsity baseball team has dropped its last three games, putting its record at 4-6 this season, but Kavaliers Head Coach Scotty Atkins is hopeful that positive things are coming from this tough string of games.

“Our schedule through the season is pretty tough,” he said. “We are a young team, and it’s definitely giving them some good experience. We’re making a few mistakes that young teams make, but hopefully we learn from them, keep improving.”

On March 27, the Kavaliers lost 10-0 at Collegiate School, and on March 29, they lost 13-4 to visiting Brunswick Academy.

Coming back from spring break Monday, Kenston Forest lost 14-6 to host Southampton Academy.

“Overall, I think we hit the ball a little bit better than we’ve been doing this year,” Atkins said. “Our defense is still making some mistakes, and we’re giving away some easy runs. I think at one point we gave up 13 runs off of 12 hits.”

But helping improve the offense was senior Chance Whitehead.

“He was struggling early in the season,” Atkins said Tuesday. “His bat finally came around. Robert Motley has been solid all year offensively. He’s probably been our best offensive player. Noah Phillips is starting to come around as well. I believe he was on base three or four times yesterday.”

The Kavs visit Tidewater Academy on Thursday at 4 p.m.

“The biggest thing I want us to work on is staying ahead, so our pitchers (are) staying ahead in the count, trying to get that first strike,” Atkins said, “and then our baserunning. We’ve got a few baserunning mistakes that hopefully we have corrected.”