The North Platte baseball team will look different this season with seven starters from last year graduating, but they have a hungry team eager to build off the success of the past.
“We are excited about the leadership that we have with our upperclassmen and will have several underclass contributing,” said head coach Daniel Atkinson. “We are excited about the momentum that last year’s senior class got and kept going over the last several years.”
The Panthers lost a pair of all-state infielders but return five varsity players, led by all-conference and all-district junior infielder Hunter Palmer. With so much turnover, they could face some early challenges, but Atkinson has faith based on what he saw from them last year.
“We have a young, talented group of men who have been working hard since last season,” said head coach Daniel Atkinson. “We got a chance to see what they had last summer and are excited about what they bring.”
The Panthers will try to grow from last year’s team, which went 19-4 and averaged 11.2 runs scored per game while giving up just 3.5 runs. While those numbers will be difficult to replicate again, they will look to play fundamental baseball to create some momentum for another deep postseason run.
North Platte will rely on leadership from the upperclassmen to continue its recent history of success, culminating with the program’s first conference title in 23 years last season. The reigning conference and district champions have a point to prove that they haven’t gone anywhere.
“They know what it takes to work hard now, overcome failure, and believe if we do that, we will be playing our best baseball in May,” Atkinson said.