Trumansburg High School hoping for repeat

Last baseball season featured a magical run to a Section IV title for the Trumansburg Blue Raiders, taking home the championship for the first time in over two decades. With key returning players back for their senior seasons and promising new faces, Trumansburg is looking for a repeat performance.

The difficult part is that five starters graduated from last year’s team. That’s a majority of the starting lineup, but head coach Scott Voorhees believes in the talent he is working with this season.

“I’m excited about the group of guys that I have,” Voorhees said. “We lost some really key players from last year. We’ve talked a lot to this group about playing your role and doing the job of filling some of those roles that we lost from last year that seem really hard to replace. We feel like we have a good core and hopefully some good quality replacements for some of those vacated spots.”

Considering the way Trumansburg won the Section IV Championship over Lansing last year — with a walk-off run scoring after a throwing error — there is some unfinished business between the cross-lake rivals. That business won’t be settled until the beginning of May, when Trumansburg meets Lansing for a three-game series. Voorhees talked about keeping his players focused on the task at hand rather than the highly anticipated games against the Bobcats.

“We have some pretty tough competition right off the bat in Dryden, so I don’t think there’s any worry about [the focus],” Voorhees said. “The way we’ve gone this year with the league going three games consecutively against the same team, I think that’s kind of interesting. That’s different than anything in my time we’ve had here, and I’m looking forward to seeing the two teams go head to head in a series like that. It seems pretty exciting. The Lansing series will certainly be exciting, but we’ve got a lot of ball before then to get through.”

With a Section IV title comes plenty of expectations. Voorhees understands that it will require a lot to reach those heights a second year in a row.

“The kids that were on the team last year have that taste of what it’s like to win the sectional championship,” Voorhees said. “That’s something that certainly is on their radar, but we haven’t had a whole lot of talk about what that takes. The coaching staff is well aware of the things that fall into place throughout. That was a magical run, and we had a good team that was peaking at the right time. When you have a lot of things fall your way that benefited us greatly, that’s hard to repeat. But that’s still the goal.”

The weather in the preseason was not very conducive to full outdoor training, leading to many indoor practices leading up to the season. In fact, weather played a factor in Trumansburg’s season debut on Monday as it was moved from Dryden to Cortland on the same day due to inclement weather the day prior.

“We’ve been outside probably five or six different times,” Voorhees said. “Parts of our field have been dry enough for us to get onto. We tend to have some pretty wet spots that we avoid. We’ve tried to get out there because it’s nice to see the ball up in the air. The gym floor isn’t exactly a good measure of ground ball fielding, but we’ve been outside doing some parking lot kind of things for long toss and those kinds of activities. We’re fortunate that we have a pretty good setup inside the gym so we can get some good work in.”

The two key contributors for the Blue Raiders who are back for their senior season are IAC All-Stars Lucas Taves and Ethan Fulton. Both players do damage on the mound for the Blue Raiders, while Taves spends his time in the field as the catcher and Fulton the center fielder. Taves missed out on most of the basketball season in the winter with a knee injury, but high contributions are expected on the diamond now that he’s healthy.

“We certainly expect a lot from those two,” Voorhees said. “They’re two good leaders. They’ve been on varsity since freshman year together. They’ve put together some time for us. This is like their final show here. Lucas [Taves] is recovered fully. He hasn’t shown any signs from his knee injury during basketball. That’s a positive, especially when you have a catcher who has to do a lot of crouching. And Ethan [Fulton] looks strong.”

It was a difficult start to the season for Trumansburg on Monday against Dryden after their original season-opener April 1 against Union Springs was postponed. The Lions no-hit Trumansburg and won with a decisive 7-0 score. The three-game series between the two teams will wrap up on Wednesday at 4:30 in Trumansburg’s home opener.

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