You might think, coming off a 2023 baseball season in which the Patagonia Lobos lost all 15 of their games, that enthusiasm for the new season would be in short supply.
Well, think again.
“Actually, it’s been a very pleasant surprise,” coach Ricardo Padilla said. “I’ve coached a number of years, and I’ve never seen this much excitement from a group of kids.”
“You would have thought that last year, we didn’t win a single game, that these kids wouldn’t want to play. But it’s surprising. They wanted to come back. They’re very excited to play right now.”
Padilla realizes it will take more than enthusiasm and excitement to reverse the fortunes of a winless program. It’s a start, but Padilla and assistant coaches Ralph Padilla (his brother) and Ryan Shore understand it’s going to take a lot of basic training.
“It’s hard at this level,” Padilla said. “A lot of them haven’t played much baseball. At the high school level we should already know the basics, but what we’re having to do right now is teach them the basics.”
“There’s not much Little League down here. It’s not like back in our days. We had Little League, we had Senior League, we had everything. We played all the time.”
The Lobos had only one senior on last year’s team. This year there are three: Isaiah Ruiz, Arturo Magallanes, Garret Mathews, all of whom are being counted on as team leaders. Junior Johnny Fields is another of the team’s leaders and was their top hitter a year ago.
The roster numbers 16—more than 20 percent of the school’s enrollment—including one girl, sophomore Lulu Donnelly.
“We’re looking better than we looked at the end of last year,” Padilla said. “They’re a year older. I think they’re a year stronger. They’ve grown up a little.
“Having 16 kids is a big deal. They’ve canceled in years past because of lack of interest.”
With the help of his assistant coaches, Padilla wants to make sure that doesn’t happen again: “We want to build the sport back up here in Patagonia.”
Padilla will have to mix and match his lineup. Ruiz, for instance, will play center field, catch, pitch, or do whatever’s needed.
“A lot of these kids, we can play them a lot of places,” he said. “What killed us last year was errors, after error, after errors. That’s what we’re working on most.”
“We scored a lot of runs, but we gave up way too many more. Defensively we struggled. That’s always been the problem here. It goes back to the fundamentals. It’s a difficult game, mentally it’s tough. There’s so many moving parts.”
Pitching goes hand and hand with defense, and that may be the bigger challenge.
“That’s the one spot that worries me the most,” Padilla said. “A lot of kids don’t like to pitch. They know it’s tough. We play these other schools and they’ve got kids that are throwing 80 (mph) plus. We don’t have anyone throwing close to that.”
Patagonia has a smaller enrollment than any team on their schedule, but Padilla is hoping that the Lobos’ renewed enthusiasm translates into something more tangible.
“We want to win,” he said. “That’s our number one goal. We want to win enough to maybe enough to maybe even make it to the state tournament.”