Comets aim to improve

Posted: Wednesday, April 14, 2010 2:49 pm


by Peter Adelsen

The Eastern Comets (18-9, 4-3 MIC in 2009) are coming into the 2010 baseball season as preseason ranked number 5 in class 2A, but is still a work in progress.

"Our outlook is to try to take each game one at a time and try to be successful in as many as we can," coach Steve Swinson said.

For the past three to four years, Swinson said, the team has been a work in progress to try to build depth and improve the program.

"We're starting to get kids to where they can play multiple positions and that has helped us in situations where we need to change pitchers and move pitchers around," he said. "Pitching has gotten much better and our defense has really improved also. The hitting part early in the season is a work in progress also and I hope that we'll get better at that as the year goes on."

Coming into this season, Swinson says the team has become more baseball savvy since last year's season.

"They are understanding situational baseball a little bit more this year," he said.

This year's team is returning six starters with seven seniors returning to the line-up, he said. With the returnees, this is bringing leadership early in the season, he said.

As for the Mid-Indiana Conference, the Comets, as well as other smaller schools, may be chasing the larger schools in the conference in the standings, but Swinson sees each game as a test for his team.

"I think the 2A schools are chasing the bigger schools in the conference," he said. "(The smaller schools) are pretty good too. It's a good gauge for us small schools to see where we're at and it's a good challenge for us. Western, Northwestern and (Hamilton) Heights are predominantly pretty good every year. We try to gauge where we're at with what we do against them year to year."

Eastern has already faced a challenging start to its season in its opening game 6-0 loss to 4A's number 4 ranked Kokomo Wildkats on March 30.

"Being as ranked as high as (Kokomo) is a pretty good opponent to start the season with," he said. "I thought we played really well against them."

With a tough schedule, this may help the Comets later on in the season.

"Our goal is to play a week or two longer than we did last year," he said. "We finished up at 18-9 and we want to improve on that record and play a little longer in the season."