Orioles’ Baseball Prepare for 2017 Season under New Leadership

The 2017 season looks to be a fun season filled with potential for the Lennox Orioles’ baseball team.

After losing ten seniors last season, the Orioles’ team took another huge loss as for the most part they lost their two coaches in Robbie Sweeter and Kyle Johnston. Both coaches had coached for the LHS baseball team for ten years so the change of leadership will be an interesting step forward. However, coach Sweeter left the head choaching job in the hands of his son Drew Sweeter who is the only coach on this years coaching squad that has LHS experience. However, former head coach Rob Sweeter is still going to assist in a few areas such as fundraisers and pitching. The other three coaches this season are Grant Sweeter, Tyler Leisinger and Johnny Mike Kirchner. While Kirchner has baseball experience, none of this year’s assistant coaches have experience for the LHS baseball team.

This year’s team has some seniors but the biggest number of players come in the sophomore, freshman and eighth grader area. This could be a factor that will be tough to overcome for many, but according to Coach Drew Sweeter, it is something they will overcome. “I’m looking for pitching and defense to be our strong suit this upcoming season. Even though we are a young team, we will have our main two starting pitchers back from last season.” Sweeter went on to talk about Senior Braedon Wallenstein and Sophomore Brock Anderson who were both outstanding starting pitchers last season. Sweeter hopes they will keep their confidence. “We lose ten seniors but we gain a lot of baseball knowledge.”

The Region 3 region is one of the toughest in the state, contending for the state championship every season. Coach Sweeter commented on this by saying, “Our region is always good. Then you have West Central and SFC (Sioux Falls Christian) who ever year are known to be in the top 5 in the state.”

This year should be an interesting season for a youthful Oriole baseball team. Coach Sweeter explained what the Orioles need to do to win. “We will have to have pitching like we had last year as well as a defense to back that up in order to give ourselves a shot at the end.”

The Orioles first game is a week from today at 6:00 in Lennox vs a Region 3 south rival, the Garretson Blue Dragons. The weather is expected to be 53 degrees and partly cloudy, making it great weather for a high school baseball game!

Have a nice day and GOOOOOOOO Orioles!