The Santaluces Chiefs took to the diamond to start the long awaited baseball season. Last year, the Chiefs made it all the way to the regional playoffs for the first time since 2005. That team was led by ace pitchers Dom Teresi and Cody Wager.

With Wager and Teresi graduating, pitching seemed to be a question mark. Santaluces made a statement in their first game against Kings Academy. The Chiefs pitched a shutout in a 9-0 victory on Tuesday night in their first preseason game.

“We did lose our three best pitchers to graduation,” said head coach, Nick Franco, “but we also have great pitchers with Justin Tworek, Dylan Love, and Jaxon Scofield.”

All three of those pitchers have been limited with game time experience since last season. Franco, however, believes the inexperience won’t be much of a factor.

“Both Love and Tworek pitched a whole lot on JV in their sophomore seasons,” said Franco, “and they were both pretty successful, so it should be a pretty smooth transition.”

The Chiefs did something this offseason that not most baseball teams do. They refrained from playing baseball at all during the offseason, according to Franco. All they would do during the fall was weight train. With such a long period without baseball, it’ll be interesting to see how much success the Chiefs can have this season. They started the preseason with a dominating performance against Kings Academy.

“Feels great to have our first game together and come out that strong,” said senior pitcher Justin Tworek. “Not playing fall ball and coming out playing like that is a good sign for the rest of the year.”

Tworek, who recently signed with Santa Fe to play baseball in Gainesville, pitched for three innings allowing just one hit with a strikeout and a walk.

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