Lord Botetourt and James River High Schools will have baseball games Monday for the first official day of spring sports for Virginia High School League schools. The Cavaliers will host Pulaski in a home game and James River will be at William Fleming.
LB will return five starters from last year’s Region 3D championship team. Senior Brae Farrell, juniors Kyle Arnholt, Matt Oliver and Carson Peggins and sophomore Connor Fuhrman were all starters on last year’s 15-8 Cavalier team.
“We’ll have some guys that have played well at the jayvee level for the past few years step in to fill the gaps of the departing seniors from last year,” said coach Todd Smith.
Pitching will come from Farrell, Oliver, Peggins, Furhman, Sammy Peery, Owen Prince, Nathan Prince and new comer senior Luke Hale, a Botetourt resident who went to Roanoke Valley Christian before enrolling at LB.
“We should have a good group, but our schedule is going to be tough,” said Smith. “The district is full of college bound players and our non-district schedule has some pretty good talent as well.”
James River coach Matt Gouker will open his second season at the helm with a game at Fleming on Monday. The Knights have seven seniors on the roster; Garrett Aaron, Kevin Austin, Dyllan McAllister, Chase Oberg, Ryan Pugh, Kevin Theimer and Hunter Wilson. Juniors are Jake Braun, Jonathan Meadows, Gabe Sebastino, Will Westergren and Kahlique White and Heath Andrews is a freshman who made the varsity.
“We feel like we have a well-rounded team this season,” said Gouker. “We feel like we are right in stride with a large amount of returners that have played together for the last couple of seasons, and we’re looking forward to a successful season.”
On Tuesday of next week things really kick into gear. Both LB soccer teams head to Lynchburg with the boys at Heritage while the girls are at Liberty Christian Academy. The boys will host Alleghany in tennis and the girls are at Alleghany.
James River will open the softball season at Patrick Henry next Tuesday and the River boys soccer team will play host to William Fleming at 7 pm.