Andover: 1, Dexter Southfield: 7
Andover Baseball took on the Dexter Southfield in its first official game of the season on Saturday, ultimately losing. Despite the defeat, the team has maintained a positive attitude and remains confident in its abilities moving forward.
According to Camden Willems PG’24, the focus of the season so far has been on hitting. The team also worked defensively to solidify its foundational skills.
Willems said, “Before the season, we worked a lot on hitting and focusing on where we want to hit in positional play and situational. How we want to hit, where we are going to want to hit, and stuff like that. And then on the defensive end, there wasn’t too much specifics that we went through. We just went through the basics, infield, outfield drills, where you want to throw on certain cutoffs, and pretty much the basics and button routines, and how to cover buttons and stuff like that.”
Marek Krystofolski ’25 noted that the team’s preseason trip to Florida proved to be beneficial. Although the team felt positive going into the game, Krystofolski believed that certain aspects of play were unfortunately not carried out as well as they’d anticipated.
Krystofolski said, “We did a lot of work, our Florida trip was very successful. We beat some good teams like Avon Old Farms and all of that, but we were confident going in. There were some times where we didn’t execute as well as we could have, as in hitting the ball as well as we could have or making the plays when it counted. But going into it, we were pretty confident in our abilities, as you should be, but I feel like the execution was just the problem.”
Willems shared similar sentiments about the team’s execution. In addition, he noted that both offense and defense had a few slip-ups that can be improved upon.
“We didn’t really execute as well as we could have. We definitely could have improved in certain areas. For example, we had two spots where we had full bases, and we had one or no outs, and all we had to do was put the ball in play to get a few runners in. And we managed to do it on one of the plays, but the others, we didn’t execute as well, and we didn’t get as many runs as we could have. Additionally, on defense, we made a few errors that could have been prevented, and some of the things that we were just lacking, we just didn’t realize yet,” said Willems.
Despite the loss, Willems applauded the team’s spirit throughout the game. He also highlighted its defense and pitching in particular.
Willems said, “The team morale was really good throughout the game, and also understanding that where we are as a team and as a group, understanding that we got to work really hard as a team to build morale. And, also our defense was actually pretty good [for] that game, and our pitching was really well executed that game. We did really well in pitching.”
Krystofolski noted that the team went into the game with the mindset of just doing their best. He shared that while it was disappointing to fall to Dexter Southfield, the experience was rewarding nonetheless.
“It’s a big game, always. Those guys are pretty good, so we never take them too lightly. We always are looking to beat them, so it sucked dropping the game to them, but going into the game, everybody was pretty excited. We were ready to play. I think we were all looking for a little better outcome, but sometimes the game just doesn’t go that way, but it wasn’t too bad,” said Krystofolski.
Moving forward, the team will continue to work on offensive and defensive situational play, according to Andy Du ’25.
“I would say a big chunk of our practices have been working on situational stuff, both offensively and defensively. Knowing where to go with the ball on defense as well as understanding the situations on the base paths is a big emphasis for sure,” said Du.
Boys Baseball will play Bridgton Academy on Friday at home, Stonybrook on Saturday at home, and Dexter Southfield again on Wednesday away.
