(Harlan, IA) — The Class 3A baseball playoff brackets will come out this week and it does not matter where Harlan will be seeded, they will be a tough out. Hayden Soma is one of the senior leaders on the Cyclones and he is seeing his team starting to get better as the season has gone on.
Harlan has a tradition of making it to the state tournament in baseball but at the beginning of the season it did not look like the Cyclones had a state tourney type of team. There was turnover in the pitching department and some of the young hitters got off to slow starts. Soma has been a steady presence as a Senior, as the team’s catcher, and he has seen a strong development of Sophomore Gavin Eck and Freshman Gavin Sisson on the mound
As a catcher, Soma is playing a leadership position and as a catcher, he can see the game better than the positional players. He can see the entire field, he hits, he works with the pitchers, he’s involved in just every part of the baseball game
Soma says he only started playing catcher when he was a sophomore — he also says he wasn’t as interested in playing baseball early in high school but has since committed to play baseball at Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge
A year ago, Soma was disappointed with his hitting with only a .231 batting average but this season he has become a reliable bat in the middle of the order at .347 and has the only two home runs of the season for the Cyclones. Soma also believes that the best baseball for Harlan this season is yet to come
Harlan is 17-7 on the season and they visit Shenandoah for a doubleheader today.
Complete Interview with Senior Hayden Soma
