Defense, pitching will carry Panthers baseball

If the Colleyville Heritage baseball team is going to repeat their district championship of a year ago, the Panthers will need to rely on their pitching and defense and hope their inexperienced players come along in due time.

And, in order for the less experienced players to garner valuable playing time, the weather preventing the first tournament of the season will do the team no favors.

Heritage was to play in the Baylor Healthcare Classic and was hoping to pick up six games. J.J. Pearce, Waxahachie, Midlothian, Fort Bend Elkins, Amarillo Tascosa and Grand Prairie were the scheduled opponents.

The Panthers are then scheduled to load in another five games this weekend in the Arlington Martin Tournament.

Heritage took the district championship last year and dropped a narrow 1-0 game to Hebron in the first round of the playoffs.

But now, the Panthers are in the new District 7-6A with the likes of Coppell, Trinity, L.D. Bell, Carroll, Richland and Haltom.

When the Panthers open district play on March 17 against Trinity, the team will have some returning players to serve as the nucleus for a potential return to the playoffs.

Two middle infielders and the catcher are all that return from last year’s starters.

Griffin Tolle will return behind the plate for his senior year, while junior Alex Alvarenga covers second base and junior Connor Kroutil will be at shortstop.

“We have some new guys stepping into roles from our sub-varsity teams from last year,” said Heritage head coach Alan McDougal. “How they acclimate is how we’ll go.”

It’s baseball, so in order for Heritage to have a strong 2015 campaign, pitching will have to be strong enough to succeed while being backed up by a tough defense.

And McDougal feels the Panthers will have what it takes.

Adam Biesiandny, a right-hander, will be assisted by Tyler Merrick on the hill for Heritage.

Along with Tolle, Alvarenga and Kroutil, McDougal said Logan Knowles can be a big contributer in the outfield as well as helping spell Tolle behind the plate.

“Knowles did well during the scrimmages,” McDougal said of the junior.

“We’ll have strong pitching and defense, but we’re still trying to figure out how we’ll score runs,” McDougal added.

“We don’t have it yet,” he said of having proven offensive leaders, “and we may run more and need execution to get there.”

Heritage will rely on being able to build playing time in the pre-district schedule as the quality of the district will be a test each game.

“With the district this year, they’re very quality opponents and we’ll have to show up in such a competitive league,” McDougal said.

The first three weeks of the season were to offer tournaments of about 15-17 games, if the weather will allow it.

If a tournament is canceled, McDougal said that’s six lost opportunities to evaluate and put the pieces together on the new squad.

The next week’s tournament is a trip to Lubbock for five games.

“We’ve got a bunch of good kids and they’re buying in to what we’re doing and they like being around each other,” McDougal said. “We’ll wait to gel and see how they do as we cruise into April.

“You never know what you’re going to get when they haven’t played under the lights on Tuesday and Friday nights,” he said. “If they step up, we’ll be fine.”

This story was originally published March 2, 2015 at 2:54 PM with the headline "Defense, pitching will carry Panthers baseball."