Baseball Begins on Saturday

For many teams, baseball begins in earnest this week with a number of scrimmages and jamborees taking place on Saturday (look for a detailed schedule late Friday night or early Saturday here on Southwest Preps).

Since three of the four 1A teams came from the Trico and Evergreen, we have to look there for a lot of the talent.

The Rockets Zach Gehring at home plate after his third home run against Ilwaco last spring (he hit five on the day). Gehring joins a number of veteran Rocket players on this year's Castle Rock Baseball team.

Kalama has several players returning from their state runner-up team. La Roy, Brandon Walker and Robbie Sanders (remember the latter two from basketball?)bring the Chinooks a lot of talent. Castle Rock also brings a tremendous edge that gives them possiby their best squad among the football, basketball and baseball programs. I watched Zach Gehring hit five home runs in a game last spring and while the solid play of Dustin Hamilton and pitching of Mike Murray begins to illustrate the team's talent, the depth is substantial.

Rochester graduated a significant number of athletes, but still need to be considered a threat in the Evergreen Conference.

Rochester's Roster