The end result was not what the Reeltown baseball team wanted, but there was still plenty to be excited about for the rest of the season.
In the season opener against Trinity Presbyterian on Monday, Reeltown fell, 8-6. However, the squad still made plenty of highlight-worthy plays. The first came from sophomore JaMarkius Smith, who made use of almost every at-bat. On his three attempts, Smith logged two hits, one double and one triple, and one RBI.
“He did a really good job,” Reeltown coach Matt Johnson said. “I think his two hits were either on the first or second pitch. He scattered the field, he hit one down the right-center field gap and the other was in the left-center field gap and ran the base as well. So he had a really good day.”
It was not just Smith who took advantage of their at-bats. In total, the Rebels logged six hits in the season opener with Hutson Lewis, Brody Smith, Reed Wood and Preston Lynn also coming away with hits to the stat sheet.
Especially with how quick of a turnaround it was from the basketball season to the baseball season, most of the guys got limited time against live pitching. Johnson knows to start the season with a performance like they had shows a lot of promise.
“I was pleased at how we scattered on both sides of the field,” Johnson said. “We hit the ball well to the opposite field. That's a good point because in the first game, you haven't seen live pitching. We've seen live pitching two different times, in a scrimmage. But coming out of basketball and trying to crunch everything, we've had two scrimmages with live pitches. So for them to come out and put together six hits is really good against a really good team.”
Reeltown also took advantage of the season opener to see what its pitchers can do for the team. Hagan Lewis, Hutson Lewis and Brody Smith all got an attempt at the mound with each showing their abilities.
“That was the plan, start with Hagan, bringing Hutson to kind of get us into Brody,” Johnson said. “I feel like they all competed. Hagan, we had an inning where we had some plays that just didn't fall for him in the field. If it would have, he could have run another inning. It’s crazy. One little mistake in the field cost your guy a whole inning. But I felt like, overall, our defense played good.”
It is still early in the season with Reeltown showing its promise on the offensive end, but Johnson wants to make sure his guys build off of that heading into the rest of its games.
“I mean, it's hard to complain about scoring six runs in the first game against a top-five team in 4A,” Johnson said. “But I just want to be more aggressive on the bases, be able to execute some situational things, get the bunts down, execute hit-and-runs, just little things like that may not show up in the books.”