Baseball preview: Parkers Prairie team will be inexperienced

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A large group of starters graduated from last year’s Parkers Prairie baseball team, and head coach Derek Denny will need to fill those vacancies.

“This year’s team has limited varsity experience as a group,” he said. “Our biggest challenge this year will be filling in spots that were anchored by our senior group last year.

“The upside to this is there are several holes to be filled, and it is up to the individual to earn their spot and keep it.”

Looking to fill those spots will be returning letter winners Wyatt Samuelson, senior; Hunter Arnold, junior; Cole Thomas, junior; Eric Ronning, junior; and Shawn Koep, junior.

They will be challenged by several other juniors in Nick Nori, Alec Alberts, Ryan McCulloch, Tyler Schlosser, Dakotah Revering, Dylan McCallson and Theo Jahnke, as well as sophomores Tarin Thompson, Clayton Rud, Rodney Morton, Tyler Hoppe, Tristan Jahnke, Spencer Poneranz, Quentin Uran, Zach Olson, Jake Bunde and Spence Libby, as well as freshmen James Vosburgh, Jack Williams, Logan Nibbe, Kyle Schlosser, Jayme Haabala, Grant Yohnke, Derek Leesberg and Nick Shircliff.

“We are hoping for competitive practices and for guys to step up,” said Denny. “We know there will be a learning curve this year.

“Another area we will be focusing on is pitching. This includes finding enough guys to pitch and getting our guys who pitched well at the JV level to make the transition to varsity.

“This is a talented group that performed very well at the JV level,” he added, “and our goal is to be playing our best baseball of the season in May and June.”

Denny will be assisted this year by Paul Walsh and Bill Wagner.

Tags: parkers prairie sports, sports, panthers, baseball