HP’s baseball team held tryouts in January to bring out the talent of new and experienced players. Last season was a bit of a struggle and didn’t go so well because the boys let themselves get defeated by giving up and putting themselves down.
Pedro Ramos who was last year’s baseball coach has officially stopped coaching for some unknown reason. After last year’s season, the baseball team stated that their goals for this year’s upcoming season was to hopefully have a better season, get more wins, and improve as a team. Last year they lost every game but came close to a win a few times.
Mr. Angel Padilla, who is now the head coach of this year’s upcoming season and School Dean, had previously coached baseball for 2 years in 1996-1997 at Fremont as a teaching assistant.
“Be sure to be clear with the basics. Don’t beat yourself up and don’t try to swing to the fence and get HOME RUNS, it’s best to produce more runs with contact hits, bunts, and walks,”
said Mr. Padilla.
Coach Padilla wants the boys to have a great season and have more wins than before. For a while, Mr. Padilla had some help from a Woodcraft staff whose name is Louie Noguera who also goes by Coach Louie to help the team improve on their defense and offense. Coach Louie would have the boys practice every day from 3:30 to 5:30 pm to get them ready for tryouts and games which will happen around March.
Coach Louie has coached baseball for 16 years. 15 years of being a baseball coach in general and 7 years of coaching at high schools. Before coming to HP to help out our boy’s baseball team, he is the head coach for Hollywood High School’s varsity baseball team. For this year’s tryouts, about 9-13 players showed up either as rookies or candidates.
The specific drills that were worked on were fielding, outfield pop-flys, double plays, hitting, and having every player play every position.
Coach Padilla saw good players out on the field, only a few looked rusty since the sport is coming back. Since tryouts had previously ended, there was only enough for a varsity team so for this year’s season, there won’t be a JV team.
Written by Julissa Montes, Staff Writer
Image Credits: Valeria Alejandre