4
Cottage Grove Baseball
Pitcher Wyatt Sayles delivers a strike at practice.
A Cottage Grove coach watches the team getting ready for the season.
Team Rundown:
Team Perspective with Emry Foster:
The seniors of the Cottage Grove
baseball team are excited to official-
ly be the ones calling the shots this
year.
“Well the thing I’m most excited
for is the growth on the team,” said
senior catcher Jaace Cross. “Espe-
cially with our senior leaders because
last year it was a little rough with our
senior leaders. I ended up becoming,
in my junior year, becoming one of
the senior leaders.”
“The seniors this year had a lead-
ership role last year. The seniors last
year kind of slacked, but I mean, it
feels good to be officially the lead-
er,” noted senior left fielder Payton
Frieze.
For Cottage Grove it will take
more than just leadership to get back
to the level of success it had two sea-
sons ago when it finished the season
ranked fourth in state.
While the Lions finished last sea-
son a game over .500 and fourth in
Sky-Em, they have pieces in place
this season to be able to compete
with the top teams in their league.
Their success this year starts with
bringing back their starting outfield-
ers in seniors Frieze, Emry Foster
and sophomore Hunter Sharkey.
Junior all-league pitcher Wyatt Say-
les will also be on the mound while
Cross, who is looking to play at the
collegiate level next season, brings
consistency from behind the plate.
“This is his third year starting. He’s
a senior behind the plate so it’s really
nice to have a senior catcher that can
take command and do things,” said
head coach Dan Geiszler.
Cottage Grove
200 Gateway Blvd.
Cottage Grove, OR 97424
4
(541) 942-5400
Mon. - Sat. 8am - 9pm
Sun. 9am - 8pm
Ed & Kori Sowa
Independent Owner-Operators
facebook.com/CottageGroveGroceryOutlet
On how the team got better in the offseason:
In the offseason our entire team,
our entire team from senior to fresh-
men put in a lot of work. So I’m ex-
cited to see that carry on the actual
field and the actual game. Lot of BP,
lot of batting practice, lot of fielding
practice.
We have pitchers before school
come in at 6:30 in the morning and
practice pitching and everything.
Yeah, a lot of hard work and deter-
mination.
We lost some good seniors last
year, it’s going to be tough to in a
sense replace them. There’s definite-
ly some players that haven’t seen var-
sity level yet. …Like I said, with as
much work as they’ve been putting
in the offseason I think we’ll go out
there and do just fine.
On what this team does well:
SAVE 40-70%
ON GROCERIES.
BEAUTIFUL, HUH?
$!$ *0.)
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!
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Wishing every team a great season!
Dine with us before the game or grab an order to go.
Torero's Family
Mexican Restaurant
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Actual teamwork. We’re a pret-
ty close team. Team bonding, team
breakfasts. We do all that kind of
stuff so I think communication and
teamwork. As a team, getting each
other up, not getting down you know
if we’re down a lot. Keeping each
other up if one of us makes a mis-
take, stuff like that. Yeah, the posi-
tivity will carry us a far distance.
On a teammate that will have a good sea-
son:
Payton Frieze. …He’s been my
best friend since kindergarten we’ve
played ball together since we were
both three-years-old. It’s cool play-
ing up all the way to see us both in
the outfield together all through our
senior year. It’s nice to have a brother
on the field.
