Last week, the boys JV baseball team faced off against the East Grand Rapids Pioneers. The Rangers went 1-1, their third game was unable to be completed due to time constraints. While it always hurts to suffer any loss to East, the boys should not let things like that hold them down.

“I feel as if we didn’t play nearly to our full potential and could’ve played way better,” said sophomore Ty Mckellar, “We definitely played down to their level and it was disappointing, but the team is looking forward to improving for our future games.”

Every team has it’s off days, and it is expected of almost every great team that they lose once in a while, what the Rangers don’t want to do is make a habit of making these mistakes. Hitting and baserunning were definitely the areas of the play the Rangers need to focus on improving for the upcoming week. It is hard to win a game when a team is struggling to hit the ball, and it is not that the Rangers can’t hit a ball, it was just one of those moments where they couldn’t get into a good rhythm.

Sophomore Joel Ford pitched a great first game of the series resulting in the Rangers’ one win in the conference matchup. The boys played very well the first game, they played good clean baseball. East is no “pushover” team, they have a lot of talent in their roster, but the Rangers have way more talent, that’s what makes the one loss so painful.

Moving forward, the Rangers have a tough opponent in the Northview Huskies. The boys are going to need to bounce back in a big way, they need to shake off any thoughts of previous losses and focus on playing fundamental baseball.

“I think our team can improve by working on our hitting,” stated sophomore Max Holser. “Our defense has been pretty solid this year but our hitting has not been the greatest.”

As long as the Rangers know what they need to work on, they will come back onto the field on Monday looking like a whole new team. The Rangers’ first match-up against the Northview Wildcats will be Monday at Northview at 4:15 for a doubleheader. This is where it all starts for the Rangers, they cannot afford many more conference losses, so now it is time to see how they respond.