LINCOLN -- Coaches sometimes get a lot of mileage out of a junior varsity baseball game and Lincoln baseball coach Shad Surber experimented with his rotation to gauge his arms.
The Wolves used four different pitchers while pulling off a 12-6 JV win over rival Prairie Grove on March 13, giving Surber a chance to assess players for the upcoming conference season.
"We competed real well, threw a lot of strikes," Surber said. "We had a good approach at the plate. We produced 12 runs, tried to be aggressive on the bases and at the plate."
Surber got a good look at a pair of freshmen pitchers, Korbin Price and Tucker Odom.
"They came out and pitched really well for us," Surber said. "Ty Burks also came in for his first appearance of the year, pitched really well."
Surber gave senior Kaleb Roy an unprecedented opportunity by sending him out to close the game in the seventh inning.
"A big shout out to Kaleb Roy, first time ever he's been on the mound, got out there, had a little fun," Surber said.
A closer can either emerge as hero or a goat, but Roy seemed undaunted.
"I've never pitched before so going in there I thought I'm going to have a little fun, just have a positive attitude and see what happens and good things will happen and it sure did," Roy said.
Roy was elated at the chance to try out his arm as a pitcher and shut out the Tigers in their final at-bat. He refused to allow fear of failure to affect his performance.
"You just got to set them aside. The ideas that you can't get outs or that you're going to fail, you just got to set them aside and keep that positive attitude," Roy said.
Roy's teammates applauded his debut on the mound, which only increased the thrill of pitching for the first time.
"It was great. As you can see [with these guys] over here. It was real exciting," Roy said. "Got to have that good defense, it's a team sport."
Roy said he doesn't focus on individual goals, instead preferring to concentrate on team achievement.
"Apart from having fun. It is part of baseball. You got to have a positive attitude because baseball's a big mental game. You get down on yourselves you won't ever succeed," Roy said. "Team goals are to get as many wins as we can, make a deep run, then that's what we got."
Lincoln returned from spring break to host Bergman in a double header on Monday, March 25.
"Early in the year we're 3-6 right now, 2-4 in conference. We just got to continue getting better and have a great attitude," Surber said.