Baseball, softball home openers this weekend

The Western Nebraska Community College baseball and softball teams will have their home openers this weekend.

The Cougar baseball team will open the home slate of games today when they host Colby Community College in one 9-inning game beginning at 1 p.m., weather depending, at Cleveland Field. The two squads will then have a doubleheader on Sunday beginning at noon.

The softball team won’t open up their home campaign until Sunday with a tripleheader beginning at noon against Lamar Community College. The softball team plays their games at Volunteer Field located behind Cleveland Field.

The Cougar ladies’ first two games Sunday will count in Region IX standings. WNCC is currently 4-2 in regional play, while Lamar is 2-4. Otero is leading the conference with a 6-0 mark. WNCC is coming off a 2-2 effort last weekend, dropping two games at Otero before downing Air Force Academy.

The baseball team, on the other hand, will be looking to get healthy recordwise against Kansas competition. The Cougars are currently 1-7 on the year after playing Hutchinson Community College and Barton County Community College the last two weekends.

WNCC baseball coach Mike Jones is hoping his team starts to turn things around. “The key for us to come out with wins is how we play defensively,” Jones said. “We’ve had some good pitching performances and we have been able to put some runs on the board. The biggest problem of us as been our defense; we make quite a few mistakes and that seems to cost us quite a few runs. It is just important for us to play better as a defensive unit.”

Phillips Orta will get the nod on the mound in Sunday’s game with Jeff McDonald and Todd Stachura will get the starts on Sunday.

While the Cougars have found the wins hard to come by early on, they are hoping to turn their season around before heading into regional play next weekend against Lamar Community College.

“It is always nice to play at home. We will see how we come out and play,” Jones said. “I anticipate [today] being a tough day with the weather. We will fight a lot of conditions.”

WNCC has had a history of starting seasons slow and finishing strong, and Jones knows that this team will turnaround into a solid ball club. The biggest thing for the Cougars is inconsistencies.

“We played much better against Barton County then we had the previous weekend. We got a little bit more confidence. We played a much quicker game,” Jones said. “For us we just need to keep playing and we have to keep learning from our mistakes. We’ve made quite a few mistakes and we haven’t been able to work on them as much as we would like. We have been fighting a lot of weather conditions. As soon as things start to warm up for us and we are outside consistently, you will see a better team.”

After this weekend’s home games, the baseball team will travel to the Air Force Academy on Tuesday, while the softball team will travel to the Air Force Academy on March 11 before hosting Dawson Community College on March 15.