Spring season workouts underway

Workouts for the upcoming baseball and softball season have started, with the softball girls scheduled to begin scrimmages as soon as Saturday.

The Lady Lions are supposed to scrimmage on Saturday in Breckenridge at 11:00 a.m., although plans are not definite since several starters are still involved in basketball. A second scrimmage is set for Thursday, Feb. 7 at home with the Lady Lions hosting Jim Ned at 5:00 p.m. The season opener is tentatively set for Feb. 12 with Albany hosting Breckenridge at 5:00 p.m.

“I only have 16 girls this year and six of them are in basketball,” coach Jimmy Fuentes said. “Plus we have a lot of kids out with illness and have not been able to really practice much.”

Baseball head coach David Fairchild is expecting 20 to 25 players this season, enough to put both varsity and JV teams on the field. 

However, he is also faced with several starters still playing basketball, prompting him to play only a JV schedule until the rest of the varsity joins after the basketball playoffs.

The JV boys are schedule to open the season in Graford on Feb. 18, followed by hosting a local JV tournament on Feb. 21-23.

Girls’ Prospects

The Lady Lions lost five seniors off last year’s team that advanced to the state tournament, losing in the semifinal game to Bells.

“I have two junior starters coming back and a bunch of freshmen and sophomores,” said Fuentes. “We will be very young this season, but there are some good prospects coming up.”

The girls are playing in District 7-2A this season, which includes four 2A school and three 1A teams. Despite being in the same district, the teams advance into two separate brackets in the playoffs with Albany, Haskell, Hawley, and Stamford following the 2A bracket and the other three dropping to the 1A bracket.

“Right off the bat we know that all four 2A teams advance to the playoffs,” Fuentes said. “I don’t like that, but we will still be playing for the championship, which gives that team a better route through the playoffs.”

The coach said that two of the teams Albany faced in district last year have changed classifications, with Anson moving up to 3A and Hamlin going down to 1A.

“Baird and Eula have elected to play with the rest of the 2A district teams during the regular season, but it won’t count towards the district title,” he said.

Baseball Looking Strong

Even though the Lions lost four senior starters, there are several varsity players returning off of last year’s district championship team. Albany advanced three rounds to the regional quarterfinal before losing to DeLeon last year.

“We lost our catcher and some pitchers off last year’s team,” Fairchild said. “Some of those were four-year starters, which are hard to replace. While we are looking for a catcher, we do have several pitchers returning like Josh Dyer, Cade Neve, and Jackson Chapman. Blaine Kayga has pitched some for us too, so we should continue to be blessed with a good pitching staff.”

The coach also noted that junior Ben West is joining the team, having played varsity level last season at Stamford, including pitching for the Bulldogs.

“There are some holes to be filled, but we are looking at those younger players to step up and meet the challenge,” he said.

The Lions passed out equipment on Monday and were expected to start practicing on Tuesday.