The Liberty-Eylau Leopards varsity baseball team is gearing up for the 2016 spring season.

L-E Head Baseball Coach Casey Cauley begins his 4th season leading the Leopards. His assistant coaches are Zach Fowler, Ricky Rushing, and Lane Elliot.

Coach Cauley says the 2014 team 10 seniors including 8 starters. So the 2015 edition was young and inexperienced so they struggled at times. A very cold and wet start to the season last year also hurt the young Leopards.

Cauley says despite those disadvantages, "the team played hard and kept a lot of the games close in score, just fell short of winning most of them."

Cauley says they have nine players returning this year who saw quite a bit of playing time, including four seniors, three juniors and a couple of sophomores. Pitching-wise, senior Kemon Freemon returns after a solid junior year. Junior slugger Triston Brooks was the top Leopard hitter last year with an over .400 batting average.

Currently, the team is conducting practices prior to the start of the regular season later this month, Coach Cauley says, "We have 18 players practicing on the Varsity team competing for spots."

"Right now, our practices revolve around pitching and defense. We still get a lot of hitting in, but our emphasis is defense. We are getting better but still have a long way to go to get to where we want to be. Our strong point is team speed and trying to use it the best we can on offense and defense," he said.

The Leopards begin play with a scrimmage slated for this afternoon, Monday February 8 at home against Hooks. L-E will also conduct scrimmages against Texas High, New Boston, and Redwater over the next few weeks.
The regular season begins on Tuesday, February 23, with a road game at Queen City.
Good Luck to Coach Cauley and his 2016 Liberty-Eylau Leopard baseball team.

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