Caleb Gottry attends Chandler Preparatory Academy and is a member of the AIA’s Student SID program.

On Thursday, April 28th, the Chandler Prep Titans baseball team celebrated their seniors. Facing one of their biggest competitors, Horizon Honors Eagles, the game was not easy for the Titans and, after an 8-1 final inning of the game, the Titans lost 15-3.

Chandler Prep refused to let this dampen their spirits and continued to honor their six seniors well into the evening. Many of the seniors, as well as much of the team, are relatively new to baseball, starting last season or this season, and so, despite the loss, Head Coach Vilaboy was still glad to have seen improvement throughout the season:

“They’ve gotten better at knowing where the ball goes, especially from the outfield to the infield and just making the play their supposed to make. We started the season with a lot of inexperienced ball players. I mean, the first couple practices, we were explaining the difference between a force-out and tagging somebody. But now, the guys have all learned how to play the game and that makes me feel good. They also all have a good sense of how to hit. They have fundamentally sound swings; they just have to see more pitches. I’m pretty proud of how these guys approached the plate tonight.”

Of course, not every Titan was in that situation and senior Crew Cascaes led the team with precision, skill, and excellence from the batters’ box and the pitching mound. Cascaes almost hit for the cycle, collecting a single, a double, and a triple. Defensively, he was an obstacle for the Eagles, holding Horizon Honors to four scoreless innings and throwing 11 strikeouts in his six innings pitching.

Senior shortstop Jaden Nelson, returning to the diamond this season after an injury last year, made some great fielding plays on Thursday. He put his entire body into every play, leaping for line-drives and sliding headfirst into home on Cascaes’s triple.

Nelson and Cascaes were the only Titans to cross home base.

Ultimately, sophomore pitcher Austin Ragsdale for the Eagles defeated Chandler Prep from the mound throwing 13 strikeouts, and the Titans few errors were turned into runs with Horizon Honor’s aggressive base running. Sophomore Diego Torres for the Eagles also hit two triples, one starting off the seventh-inning offensive explosion that secured the win.

The Chandler Prep Titans are currently #24 in the conference ranking and will likely have a tough first game in the playoffs. Titan Up.