For the Fremont Tigers baseball team, the 2021-2022 season has started off with a bang. The Tigers are currently 9-4 and ranked eighth in Class A.
“We’re off to a pretty good start. I think that the weather has been a unique spring with us being out right away and then getting forced back,” head coach Jeff Hayden said. “We had some rough weather weeks and days, but for the most part, the season is off to a pretty good start. There are things we can get better at but also things are going pretty well.”
One of the biggest changes made this year was the transition from the Archbishop Bergan Knights to the Fremont Tigers baseball team.
“We changed our co-op from Fremont instead of Bergan. Our uniforms are different and we’re leaving from a different school and getting on a different bus,” Hayden said. “Our expectations for our kids are the same, and our coaching staff is the exact same.”
Even with the change in name, the team still had multiple players return this year.
“We have a bunch of pretty talented players right now: Carter Sintek, Landon Mueller, Cal Janke, Isaac Herink and Jax Sorensen. Ryan Dix has been a young arm out of our pin that’s doing really well,” Hayden said. “We’ve got a pretty good core group of kids.”
The biggest goal for the season is to win a district championship and compete for a state title.
“Every year we want to win a district title. We want to qualify for the state tournament and that’s our goal. It’s kind of our goal throughout the course of the entire season,” Hayden said. “Luckily, the last couple of years we’ve accomplished that goal, but this year’s a new one so we need to try to do it.”
To win that district championship title, the Tigers will have to compete against some tough teams in the Heartland Athletic Conference.
“The last couple years played in 2019 and 2021, we have played Gretna in the summer for a state title. We’ve developed a rivalry with those guys. Also, all the other schools in HAC. Those are all schools that we look at as our rivals,” Hayden said.
The Tigers will have to face some tough competition over the next few weeks to earn their spot as district champions and to continue earning a high ranking in Class A.
