(Avoca, IA) – Baseball season is finally here and the AHSTW Vikings are bringing back multiple familiar faces from the 2023 season. The Vikings have been placed into Class 1A which was great news for Head Coach Trey Brix who was already excited to get into baseball action. While it has been a challenge with spring sports still going on, the Vikings are ready to hit the diamond and play some good old-fashioned baseball.
AHSTW is returning quite a few top pitchers from last season. Nick Denning was the team’s ace last year with a 1.40 ERA, going 4-3 with a .144 opponent batting average and a team-leading 54 strikeouts. Aiden Akers also had quite a few good games last season with a 1.91 ERA and threw 27 strikeouts in 29.1 innings while Charlie Lane had a 1.17 ERA in 10 innings pitched and showed some promise to be a key pitcher this season.
From pitching to hitting, the Vikings featured Caleb Hatch who was third on the team in batting average at .347 with with 25 hits and 18 singles. Nick Denning was just behind in batting average at .329 with a .507 slugging percentage and is the returning doubles leader with 10 from last season. Blake Akers is the returning battling average leader at .359 with 23 hits, 17 of which were singles. This team features quite a bit of talent at the plate that will help out in consistency throughout the season.
With it being early for baseball action, and multiple boys just getting off of the spring season, Coach Brix expects his boys to be just a bit rusty. They were able to scrimmage Atlantic this past weekend to knock off some of that rust and get ready for baseball action this week. The Vikings have a matchup in just a few days on Friday, May 17th against Stanton for their home opener.
AHSTW will take the next two days to prepare for their matchup against the Stanton Vikings at home that will start at 7:30 p.m. at AHSTW High School. KSOM will be covering AHSTW’s game against Audubon on Tuesday, May 21st and will start at 7:15 p.m. at Audubon.
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