Young Baseball Redbirds Continue To Play Hard, Future Looks Bright Under Coach Harper

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EDWARDSVILLE - The Alton High baseball Redbirds are a young team that has worked hard and continues to improve as the season progresses with five wins to date. The Redbirds fell to Edwardsville at Edwardsville twice this week, 10-0 on Thursday in four and a half innings.

"We've just got to keep our heads up and keep plugging away," said Alton head coach Scott Harper. "They're a good club and they're undefeated for a reason and we've just got to continue to take care of our business, take care of what we can do, and try to be better each day."

Although Alton lost both games this week to the Tigers, 13-3 and 10-0, the effort was certainly there, and the Redbirds kept battling in every at-bat and play.

Deon Harrington had a single for the Redbirds in the fifth inning against The Tigers, who remain undefeated.

"Yeah, we tried our best and we want to continue to compete," Harper said. "Obviously, the scores are one-sided and lopsided with that, but we've just got to continue to build. We're young, but we'll keep working at it."

The Redbirds have benefitted from senior leaders who are setting the examples for the younger players."

"We've had some seniors that have had decent seasons for us," Harper said, "(James) Vambeketis and (Caden) Laslie try to be leaders offensively and working from the seniors' standpoint. And we're young, so we've got some guys that are getting their first varsity experience and competing, so our pitchers, Max Ontis in a senior, (Ashton) Schepers today, they both got hit around a little bit, but we've just got to continue to work and try to be better."

The future for the team does look promising indeed, and the players are gaining the valuable varsity experience that helps down the road.

"We're getting that experience, that's the big positive out of this," Coach Harper said. "We're playing four sophomores and some juniors and we'll have some other guys that we'll be mixing in too, so we're getting that experience quickly."

The Redbirds are now 5-11 on the year and host Highland on Friday, then host the St. Louis Patriots, a home school team, on Monday and Collinsville on Tuesday before visiting Collinsville next Thursday, with all games starting at 4:30 p.m.Dan Brannan also contributed to this story.

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