CHOCOWINITY — Last year’s Southside baseball team was a young one. There were more freshmen and sophomores on the team than juniors and seniors. The inexperience sometimes cost the Seahawks as three of their 11 losses were by two or fewer runs. That’s not a significant amount of games, but it was enough to make the difference between a winning and losing season.

Fast-forward a year and that campaign should pay dividends as this season gets underway next week against Columbia. All but two players — Phillip Smith and Will Mumford, who graduated last spring — return to this year’s squad.

The offense and pitching are there. It will be Southside’s defense that may make or break the season. The Seahawks hope playing sound defense will be the key to the program making the playoffs for the third time in a row, which would be the first time accomplishing such a feat in the program’s history.

Here’s what coach Kevin McRoy had to say ahead of the season opener:

 

On where the Seahawks left off last year:

“We skidded into the playoffs as a wildcard and lost in the first round to a tough, conference team (East Carteret). … We struggled at times, but the boys stayed upbeat. Defensively, we had letdowns in a couple games that cost us a few games. This year, we’re trying to build up on our defense.”

 

On how the defense is shaping up:

“It’s mental errors. Hopefully we’re going to play with a little more confidence. I feel like a lot of the errors last year were caused by us overthinking things and putting too much pressure and not playing relaxed. Hopefully year we’re going to come out and still play with a little pressure, but play a little more relaxed. … A lot of them have a year more under their belt, a year more of experience. … Last year we were playing with a lot of sophomores. They’re going to be more experienced.”

 

On having a more experienced group this year:

“We bring in more experience this year. We really only lost two guys from last year, which will be tough to replace, but I feel like we’ve got some guys that will be able to step up this year.”

 

On what to expect from the offense:

“Offensively, I feel like we’ve always put the bat on the ball. We’ve always been able to hit the ball hard. Last year, we were hitting the ball hard, but a lot of the time we were hitting it right to the defense. Then we started, towards the end of the season, kids started finding the holes. I feel like we’re going to hit the ball and be offensive. We’ll be fine offensively.”

 

On what to expect from the pitching staff:

“We’ve got everyone back. All of our pitchers are returning from last year. Right now, we have Terry Moore and Paul Radford competing to see who’s going to be our ace. They both, in the offseason, have been looking very good. We’ve been working a lot more with our pitchers and catchers this offseason.

“We’re definitely going to see an improvement in our pitching. … We have a sophomore Dakota Modlin who I’m expecting to come in and be able to pitch pretty well for us and be a staple in our pitching rotation.”

 

On building a baseball tradition at Southside:

“We have some internal goals we’ve talked about. Reasonably, we want to finish in the three or four in conference and get an automatic playoff bid. We expect to go to the playoffs every year. Southside, traditionally, has not been a staple in the playoffs. We’ve been there back-to-back years. Hopefully we can build on that and make it three years in a row. That would be the first time in history in the school.”