Trumansburg baseball off to strong start

Two years removed from a Section IV Class C title, the Trumansburg baseball team is already on the right track to make it back to the sectional final.

The Blue Raiders have come flying out of the gates this season, winning their first eight games. As of April 16, they’ve outscored their opponents at an astonishing total of 91-8. Head coach Scott Voorhees attributes their early success at the plate to the work they put in well before the season began.

“The players who have started off hot are ones who have worked really hard throughout the offseason,” Voorhees said. “They’re coming in after a full winter of doing things like going to batting practice and getting outside work. We have a group—especially a core of young guys—who really love the game. They’re their equivalent of the gym rat. They’re the diamond rats because they love the game. It’s really, really energetic to be around them and just to see how much they really live and breathe it.”

The Blue Raiders’ young core has been particularly outstanding. In fact, the top three players in terms of batting average are the three youngest players on the team: Willoughby Puryear (freshman), Ozzy Vogel-Moore (eighth grade), and Aiden Clarke-Cabezas (freshmen). The trio is already making an impact at the varsity level and setting up a bright future for the program.

“I think they energize the older guys and the veterans on the team,” Voorhees said. “They’ve really come out strong. [It’s] been pretty impressive with the way they go about their business. All three of them are playing key positions, not just with their bat. Willoughby’s done a nice job at first base and pitching. Aiden’s done a nice job at shortstop and did a little pitching, and Ozzy’s been pretty much splitting time with Owen Fulton behind the plate. We’re not sticking them in the lineup someplace and hiding them. They’re in pretty crucial defensive positions, as well.”

Moving up a grade, sophomore Nik Nelson has been the standout player both on the mound and at the plate. Through the first eight games, Nelson leads the Blue Raiders with 12 RBIs and has a 0.93 ERA. Voorhees explained how Nelson has already stepped up as a leader in just his second year on varsity.

“We watch him play football and basketball and baseball, I think it’s really easy with Nick to watch him and forget that he’s a sophomore,” Voorhees said. “Because he has been in leadership positions in all three of those sports and playing at the varsity level as a returning starter for me in baseball, that is who you look to to be a leader, and a lot of the kids do look to him to be the leader. Sometimes I’m afraid that that’s asking a lot of someone so young, but I think he likes being looked to. Every once in a while, he catches himself and says, ‘I need to be better about certain things,’ and he has set that up as a personal goal this year to say, ‘I want to be a better leader.’”

With the regular season already over halfway through, it only gets tougher from here. Trumansburg takes on defending Section IV Class C champions Lansing in a three-game series from April 17-21, followed by a game against Moravia before closing out the regular season with a three-game set against Dryden. While the first half of the season brought easier opponents for the Blue Raiders, there were still plenty of things to take into account ahead of a difficult stretch of games.

“In a couple of our games, we were down early,” Voorhees said. “In those kinds of situations, these guys have rebounded…Even if it doesn’t start off good, I think that you have to take that [resiliency] into challenging games, because other teams are going to be coming out prepared and ready to battle us, as well. I think that’s something that’s important, getting some experience, especially for my young guys on the field, in the first few games before we went into some really tough series to kind of get that under their belt and say, ‘Okay, I belong here. Let’s go and let’s play with the top schools in our division next.’”

With Lansing moving up to Class B, the door is slightly more open for Trumansburg to capture its first sectional title since 2021. While the pitching and hitting have been on point, Voorhees emphasizes that defense is the key to winning it all.

“Last year, we saw our season end against Elmira-Notre Dame, and the primary reason it ended at that point was our defense. I trust our pitching. I’ve got five pitchers that I feel like I trust to put out there to throw strikes. I feel like our offense will scratch some runs together against most opponents. If we can play defense, I think that makes us competitive right to the end of sectionals.”