The Warriors left Florida with with a 2-7 record. It was not what anyone expected, but the first leg of the season is completed. I told the team that the season is divided into three parts: the spring trip, the regular season and hopefully a run into the play-offs. The 9 games in Florida showed some positives. Dave Tarr, Ben Monteiro, Ethan Kelley and Shane Holmes all had solid starts. They all pitched well enough to win. We just didn’t give them any run support. The defense was above average, with solid infield and outfield play. Travis Ritchie played centerfield as well as anyone I have coached in my tenure at Massasoit. The play at shortstop from both Chris Roumbakis and Chris Samaras was very solid. The offense needs work, as we simply did not score enough runs. There were some hard hit balls that were caught, but in reality there weren’t a lot of balls that were struck well. We managed to get runners on, we did not drive them in.

The schedule in Florida was a challenging one as we played a series of games against Division II opponents, like Kirkwood CC (IA) and North Iowa Area CC. However, we didn’t come up big, when we needed to, when we played a very competitive Division III, Riverland CC (MN) in a pair of back to back games to finish off our trip. They blew us out in the first, but we came back to play a tight second game, which resulted in a 5-2 loss. Unfortunately there are no points for staying with a team. In the end each game has a winner and a loser. The Riverland CC  Blue Devils came to play and walked away with a pair of wins.

Now it’s back inside for at least a few days (hopefully!) and see if we can press the reset switch on our offense. If the pitching and defense hold true and there is now reason to think it won’t, we should be able to turn the season around.

We are scheduled to play at Dean on Wednesday,  but we will just have to wait and see how mother nature treats us over the next few days.

Shane Holmes, Ethan Kelley and Dave Tarr all had quality starts in Floirda.