The Knights baseball team has been working on improving their pitching strengths, chemistry, and defense to increase their wins from the previous year’s 9-15 season.

The Knights are looking forward to having key players return, including seniors Joe Whitaker (’22): second baseman with a fielding percentage of 0.968, and Lamont Akins (’22): a pitcher with 11 runs and 15 hits.

Whitaker, last year’s Hillsborough County district player of the year who had stats of 0.381, 21 runs expects the knights to go deep into the playoffs, which hasn’t been accomplished since the final four appearance in 2015.

“My goal for senior year [is] to win a state championship, nothing else,” Whitaker said.

Akins has some high hopes with the team this year as well. 

“I expect us to have a really strong season and shock a lot of people,” Akins said.

Lamont is one of the starting pitchers. With an  ERA 2.73, WIN 1, IP 33.1, K 40, OBA .264, FP .955

Besides the senior leadership, the Knights have a strong group of underclassmen. Sophomore Aleks Yarich, underclassman are looking forward to grow with the team and make an impact. “I expect a dominant season especially on the mound and lots of wins this year,” Yarich said.

” Last year I gave my all everyday at practice and tired to constantly learn from the older guys what they did to get to where they were.” Yarich said.

Coach Barron has led the team for four seasons and continue to improve the team no matter the circumstances.

“The inevitable downs in between the ups, the things that don’t go our way,” Barron said. “Guys not in the [position] they want to be in, but trying to be a good teammate to see if we can put all that together in the course of 25 games and end it in the way that we want.”

Some upcoming games to watch are Jefferson (March 8), Sickles (April 7), Steinbrenner (April 19), Lennard (April 21). Also, Robinson’s rivalry, Plant (March 25), which is a home matchup this year.

“Always Plant. There is always fireworks there with the rivalry and then, outside of that, Sickles and Steinbrenner are always strong,” Barron said.