The ball weighed heavily in the player’s hand as he made his way to the field. The sun beat down on him, as the crowd fell into a dull roar. He lined up his bat, waiting as the other team’s pitcher reared his arm back, getting ready to throw. Crack! The ball flew through the stadium and into the crowd: one, two, three, home run. He had done it.

This year CP’s baseball team will be making their way into the playoffs. Playing right field, junior Hayden Craig explains the feelings the team had when they found out that they were going to playoffs.

“We were super excited,” Craig said. “We were so grateful to keep playing with the seniors and have the opportunity to make a playoff run.”

This season though, has been another adventure according to junior Josh Paramo who played third base but is currently the resident pitcher and plays first base.

“This season has had its ups and downs with people getting injured, but overall it’s been fun and we’re just trying to keep it going through playoffs,” Paramo said.

This year, baseball received a new coach: Coach Gawriluk.

“We don’t have very many returners from last year so the new coach doesn’t change too much in that aspect, but Coach Gawriluk is a great coach who knows the game of baseball and does his best to put us in the right spot to be successful,” Paramo said.

Having a new coach wasn’t one of the hardest parts about this year, according to junior Austin Silguero, but their egos.

“This year we started out with big egos and we didn’t come together as a team, but as the season went by we came together and now all of us are basically brothers,” Silguero said.

While the district realignment will not kick in till next year, the boys still had a pretty difficult play list, starting with Georgetown.

“The hardest team to beat was Georgetown because they played really good fundamental baseball,” sophomore Dalton Hayek said. “The best game of the season though was the last one against Vista Ridge, because we won in extra innings with a score of 1-0.”

This week though, the boys will play McCallum in the first round of the playoffs.

“Our main focus this week is McCallum right now, and they are our only opponent that matters,” Craig said. “They are a good ball club and have a pretty good set of players.”

The most challenging part of the season as a whole has been their offense, according to Craig which will filter into playoffs.

“The hardest part of the entire season, will definitely be putting runs on the board. It’s going to be difficult because we haven’t had a very offensively productive season, and that’s the main hurdle we need to get over,” Craig said.

In the end though, the boys feel like they will pull through and do what they can to make this season great.

“I am going with varsity to playoffs and I feel like if we put everything together our team could end up playing for a State championship because we have lots of talent and we love each other,” Hayek said.