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After a successful summer legion baseball season where Grand Island made the Class A American Division playoff, many of the same players are back for the spring baseball season.
February 27 was the team’s first practice of the season. Despite rotating from outdoors and using the hitting facility and community fieldhouse due to weather, Grand Island coach Kirby Wells said they’ve had a great preseason.”“We’ve really been led by our seniors,” Wells said. “We have 11 seniors on our team this year. They’ve been dedicated and really holding each other accountable. They set the groundwork for that all the way back in December. We’ve been working hard every week and tryouts went really well. We’ve got a good core with our seniors, and we’re going to look for some juniors and sophomores to step up as well.”
Grand Island was supposed to play their season opener at home on Friday against Millard North. Wells said they had a lineup ready to go, but the weather has pushed back the season opener to March 21 at Hastings. Wells said his guys are anxious for the season to start.
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“The most difficult thing is when we get outside for a couple of days and boom, we have to go right back inside,” he said. “We had two great practices on Tuesday and Wednesday outside and were able to get on our field. Today, we were able to go back inside. You always want to look at the team’s energy and see what our focus was like.
“You have to be creative and not do the same thing all of the time indoors and work on different drills and get better every single day. That’s what we try to do when we use our cage and go to our community fieldhouse because you never know when you’re going to get outside or back inside.”
When the season does get underway, Wells said he expects the seniors who have played a lot of baseball to continue to lead the charge.
“Our pitching staff is going to be led by senior Cohen Evans (younger brother of Nebraska baseball player’s Cole Evans) who’s played a lot of baseball for us not only in the spring but in the summer,” he said. “Eli Arends is another senior outfielder we’re going to look to lead and be the nucleus of our outfield as well as help carry us at the plate. Riley Plummer is going to be a big piece of our infield. Carson Leiting is also a senior and an important bat in the lineup, and Tyler Douglass is a returning catcher who has had a ton of experience as well.”
Wells said it’s hard to tell right now but early indications are they’re going to be a pitching and defensive first team.
“We’re going to be a group that’s going to attack from the mound, and it’s going to start from the mound,” Wells said. “Cohen Evans is that guy we’re going to look to to lead our pitching staff, and our team. He’s worked extremely hard in the offseason and has added a third pitch and is working on a fourth. He’s been a great example for everybody. …We’re going to attack hitters.
“Offensively, it’s hard to say what we are right now, but I would say to manufacture runs, we’re going to have to put together quality at-bats and drive the ball gap to gap. I don’t think we’ll be a huge home run hitting team. If we are, more the merrier, but I see us playing a little small-ball and stealing bases and moving runners over and any way to manufacture runs.”
To go along with the same theme, Wells said their team motto this year is “toughness.”
“We’re going to be tough on the mound and tough defensively, and we’re going to be a tough out at the plate,” he said. “What that means is grinding out at-bats and really doing anything we can to help the team get on base or drive in a run or steal a base or take that extra base. Just being a tough all round team, if we continue to do that every single day and get better every single day, that motto will take care of ourselves.”
Grand Island hasn’t been back to the state tournament since 2019. Wells said that remains their No. 1 goal as well as just improving every day and playing their best ball at the end of the season.
Last year, Grand Island lost four games by one run and eight games by three or less. Wells said the key for the Islanders to get to state is to flip those close games.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve been one pitch or one play and one hit away from a win in some of the games we’ve lost,” he said. “Just finishing games out when we’re ahead and being ready to play and having a fast start, all of the little details baseball requires, if we do that and the little things right, I can see us having a successful season.”
