It’s a new season for Sweet Home’s baseball team and second-year Coach Evan Teter is optimistic that his young players might surprise some people this season as the Huskies kick off their season this week.
Sweet Home was scheduled to open Tuesday at Madras, then return Thursday, March 20, to host Siuslaw/Mapleton.
The Huskies are coming off a 3-21 season, “obviously, not what we wanted,” Teter said, but he noted that the team went 1-20 the year before before losing eight seniors.
This year, the roster is heavy with underclassmen, but the reason Teter is optimistic about their chances is their work ethic, he said.
Also, even though last year’s team was heavier on age, it was shorter on experience.
“A couple of those kids had stepped away from baseball for a couple of years and then came back and a lot of them had just been playing JV ball until their senior year,” Teter said.
“We had some talent that, I think, a lot of people didn’t see, which didn’t always come through in games.”
Leading hitter and pitcher Huston Holly is gone to graduation, but five underclassmen from last year’s roster are back this year, as well as senior Jason Funk, who was voted Most Improved from last year’s lineup.
Now-sophomore Kyle Zajic, “a natural athlete,” returns after being named last year’s best fielder and Rookie of the Year and honorable mention All-Conference, as well as junior Luke Rosa, who got the Hustle Award in 2024.
Rosa, Teter said, has gained “a lot of strength” and is one of the hardest workers on the team.
Juniors Cohen Gutierrez and Eddie Taylor return with experience as well, and those five have been providing “good” leadership to the nine underclassmen – five sophomores and four freshmen – on this year’s varsity roster.
“We’ve got eight new guys this year who are coming in without varsity experience, so having that leadership is really helpful.”
Rounding out the roster are senior Hunter Dalley, juniors Lynkin Royer and Jeremiah Steagall, sophomores Tregon Francis, Kaidence Greer, Bradyn McClure and Cole Ogbin, and freshmen Kyler Bondesen, Damon Lawrence, Conner Northern and Jake Smith.
In addition to swingers on the varsity roster, junior varsity players include junior Manny Rivera sophomores Caiden Matthews and Braden Paul, and freshmen Gavin Baker, Braidyn Borello, Micheal Eggers, Paxton Freeman and Preston Paslay.
Teter will be assisted in the dugouts by Mike Carpenter, Cliff Dominy, Jim Hagle, Dylan Luttmer, Zach Luttmer, Joe Medley and Joe Rosa.
“We’ll be pretty young,” Teter said. “We’ve got two freshmen, Conner and Damon, that’ll be playing varsity pretty much full-time, (though) we might send them down to get more experience on the mound, things like that.” A couple of other freshmen will be swinging, he said.
“We’re just looking to not only build for the future, but get them ready for right now, too,” Teter said. “I think we’ve got talent right now to be successful immediately. I don’t think we have to necessarily rebuild a whole lot. I think we’ve got what we need now.
“We’ve got a group that wants to be successful now and is really putting the work in for it.”
He said he’s seen a “big shift” in attitude on the team.
“They’re really lifting each other up throughout the first couple weeks of practice, which, since I’ve been here, it’s been a struggle to see that often. We’ve got a couple of guys that are just right on it and getting guys back into it.
“We’ve had some really, really focused practices, which has led to us, rather than teaching new stuff, we’ve been able to fine-tune stuff, which, again, is something I don’t think we’ve seen a lot over the past few years.”
All that, he said, gives coaches hope that the team will move to a “higher level than what we’ve been seeing.”
Teter said he had “four or five” players who spent the fall and winter working on their games, which has led to some of them getting spots on the varsity roster.
“We’ve just seen so much growth in those guys.”
He said his program’s emphasis extends beyond baseball.
“We’ve talked to them about how baseball is a game of failure and they’re going to fail. But it’s teaching them for the future. When they’re grown up and facing adversity when they’re in the workplace or their family, we’re trying to teach them about that stuff too.”
The Oregon West Conference is one of the strongest in the state at the 4A level, putting, Teter said, six teams in the playoffs in 2022, four of them advancing beyond the play-in round.
“Newport’s going to be really, really strong this year,” Teter predicted. “They only had a few seniors last year and they were really, really strong. They return all their starting pitchers and a lot of their key guys.”
Philomath, which “wasn’t expected to be that great last year” and exceeded those expectations, returns “a lot of really high-level guys,” he said.
“North Marion is North Marion. They’re always going to be good. They’re very, very talented at just developing guys. Even when they have guys that come in who aren’t on the highest level, they know ways to get them there. They’re never somebody that could be taken lightly.”
Sweet Home, though, while losing “a lot of guys” to graduation, “the guys we have replacing them, I think, can be just as good or not better in the long run,” Teter said.
“And we’ve got time to develop them as well, which is really exciting. They are coming in ready to learn and open to coaching, and have a lot of talent. They do have high expectations for themselves and they’ve got a work ethic.”