ABOVE: Front row left to right Huxley Clow, Brock Jagodzinske, Blakely Scholl, Jack Carlson, Eli Meixell, Emmet Olson, Eli Olson, Jerry Olson, Preston Cepress, Easton Kuehl, Beckett White, Lain Feltman, Kyson Haukoos. Back row: Assistant coach Tyler Wille, Ian Matejka, Colsan Andersen, Brenan Ringnell, Kade Fenern, Liam Pytleski, Dakota Reisdorfer, Talon Ebeling, Michael McCorkell, Cam Meyer, Maddex Faber, Jacob Wilmes, Lucas Larson, Eli Owens, Noah Meixell, head coach Jon Traetow, Assistant coach Parker Anderson

SHERBURN – The Martin County West Mavericks are suiting up again for the baseball season, only this time with new head coach Jon Traetow, who is ready to build the squad into the dominant team it can be.

“I don’t know a ton about the previous teams,” said Traetow. “That’s actually intentional. I wanted to come in this year with a blank-slate mentality. I wanted to get a true evaluation of the guys on the team, and I didn’t want any prior bias to impact my thoughts on it. I’m really glad I did it that way. I am super excited for this ball club we have this year.”

The Mavs host seven returning seniors in Brenan Ringnell, Lucas Larson, Jacob Wilmes, Jerry Olson, Eli Owens, Cam Meyer and Richard McMains.

After reviewing a few statistics from last season, Traetow and the coaching staff have focused on what they will work on this season, starting with pitching, hitting, and fielding.

“A lot of things that we’re really trying to focus on kind of stemmed from some statistics that I

took from the previous year,” said Traetow. “Last year, we had a lot of walks as a pitching staff.

We had a lot of strikeouts as a group, hitting-wise. And then we also had a lot of errors in the

field. So those have been our three main focus points where we have been really fine-tuning

Mechanics”

Pitching is just as much mental as it is physical, and in the new era of high school baseball, where pitch counts come into play frequently, every member of the team needs to be ready to take the mound.

“We spent a lot of time the first couple weeks treating everyone as a pitcher,” said Traetow. “And we kind of broke it down step-by-step what this should look like, how this should feel, and just the overall philosophy behind pitching. When I played high school baseball, we didn’t have a pitch count. Now, that’s something that impacts how we coach and utilize our players every day.

“So, I just told the guys from day one, if you’re on this team, there’s a very good chance that you will pitch at some point. So, I need to treat all of you like pitchers and attack it from a whole-team mentality.”

The Mavericks’ approach in the batter’s box has changed slightly. The new focus is to get in there, attack the ball, put it in play, and capitalize on every opportunity.

“Last year, over half of our strikeouts were looking, as in where we looked at the third strike,” said Traetow. “That’s just a mentality that we’ve really had to address early. We like to describe it as you get two strikes for yourself. Feel free to do what you want with those two strikes. But once you get to two strikes, that’s when your mentality has to change. And that third strike has to be for the team. You have to keep this ride going. You have to put that quarter in the machine to continue the merry-go-round. So that overall mental shift is what we’ve really focused on.”

Defensively it’s fine tuning taking place for MCW as errors were problematic in the past which was a key factor in the inability to put teams away last season.

“Defensively, having as many errors as they did last year, you’re just giving a team extra at-bats, extra opportunities,” said Traetow. “And it’s really hard to win baseball games when you do that. The way you win baseball games is getting 21 outs the most efficient way possible.”

Traetow is preaching to his team that the best ability is availability while balancing the game’s mental aspects.

“With how cerebral baseball is, I mean, it is ultimately a mental game,” said Traetow. “There are so many different intricacies that happen in between each pitch that just your novice fan doesn’t realize. So, I think having the right attitude and the right approach and the right mentality, staying mentally locked in, does pay dividends in this game. But at the end of the day, this game can be taxing physically as well. So, ability is one thing. We always preach your best ability is availability. So you’ve got to be taking care of your body off the field.”

The team is also expected to work in the classroom, and setting the tone of academics is very important to the club.

“Availability also comes from the classroom,” said Traetow. “You have to take care of things at school if you ever plan to do anything on the field. We are very adamant in setting this culture that these student athletes are students first. And we have to be, we have to hold our expectations high no matter where we’re at.”

The Mavericks open their season against the Granada Huntley East Chain/Truman/Martin Luther Jaguars for a 4:30 p.m. game on Thursday.