Early in March, something extraordinary happened: there weren’t tryouts for baseball. All ballplayers just gathered in the gym and began warming-up their arms.There were alot of mixed feelings about this new seasons ideals.

I began asking questions to some coaches and players and i found a surprising amount of opposing views.

One coach had this to say about this situation, “We decided that it would be best to not have tryouts this year, due to the shortage of guys, also we noticed no upcoming problems with new guys, specifically freshmen, the only issue is that there weren’t a lot of them. We also wanted to hit the ground running this year by starting practices way earlier than previous seasons, and take away stress and hassle that wasn’t needed.”

The coach mostly had positive things to say about the situation, possibly due to the fact that they made the big decision, but what about the actually players?

I also spoke with RJ Brothen, who is a junior and plays pitcher and first baseman. “Honestly, I support and like all of the coaches, but I feel like this will only lead to attitude problems on the teams, specifically: a false sense of safety. The coaches have always told us that teammate-competitiveness was the key to a strong team. This competitiveness only comes with a sense of failure, but that has been essentially eliminated from the equation. The only threat now is seeing the bench.”

RJ puts out some very good points with the lack of competitiveness being a foreseeable issue, however, there is another side. Competitive nature can certainly be taken too far, especially by high schoolers.

I spoke with one more person named Jeremy Brown, a sophomore who also pitches and plays first baseman. He took an opposing side. “Personally, I think that this is a good idea. I believe that this could make the team closer, all that in-team competitive mentality really made last year a harsh environment for players and coaches, especially on varsity. Not only that, but I don’t think we had enough numbers this year or lost year to cut and most people know how to play at least. Sometimes having a staff that cuts also leads to less numbers turning up wanting to play baseball, a lot of people I talked to didn’t really want to come back after being cut last year.”

This year will certainly be interesting.