Varsity sports teams are usually dominated by seniors, but this year the baseball team’s top division includes six juniors and two sophomores who made the cut to play with the big dogs.

Chris Castro, Kyle Taylor, Jason Porter, Adam Gutierrez, Nick Cancino and Nate Flores make up the juniors on varsity. Sophomores Mason Arvallo and Rudy Reyna round out the team with the seven seniors.

“Being a junior on varsity, feels like a big role I have to fulfill in order to help the team out,” Castro said.

In early March the team enjoyed two district wins with high scores: 6-1 over the Del Valle Cardinals and 8-0 over the Lehman Lobos. In the game against Lehman, pitcher Adam Ivey struck out 18 batters. With the constant hits from Austin McNicholas, Jason Porter, Nate Flores, and Ivey that lead the team to victory with the score 8-0.

“During the game, it felt just like any other game. It just kept going from inning to inning, and I was focusing on the situation at hand,” Ivey said. “After the game, I was amazed at the amount of strikeouts. It was statistically, the best game I’ve pitched in terms of pitches thrown, walks, and strikeouts.”

Currently, the team is 3-6 in district play, but the season is only half over. Players said they feel like they still have a good chance to improve their record and possibly make the playoffs.

“I knew we had a solid team this year, with good offensive support,” Ivey said. “We still have a good chance at playoffs. The games after (the initial wins) we lost confidence, we just need to realize how good of a team we are, and focus on dominating this second half of the season.”

The team also did well in the Austin ISD tournament held in early March with four wins and only one loss to Copperas Cove.

Since March 12 the team hit a slump in district games losing to Anderson, Austin, Westlake and Bowie high schools.

“In the games we lost, we got to a point where we would began to give up, but once we got passed that we learned we could come back and win the game,” Castro said.

With more than half of the team leaving for college at the end of the season, Ivey left a few words for the ones who plan to continue playing next year.

“Don’t underestimate yourselves, baseball is a sport where anyone can win, no matter the opponent,” Ivey said.

Baseball is a sport you can play just for fun with family or just friends, but most of these boys who have played it their entire lives and see it as a thing they plan to make into a career.

“I’ve loved baseball even before I started playing, I would go to my brother’s game and just love all the energy that they would put in,” Castro said.