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Final chapter: London seniors' goals aimed at fourth state tournament

By: Larissa Liska

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The London Pirates' baseball field is still under construction, but in about a month or two it will be ready for the Pirates to play some baseball. While the field is new, the team is not. This roster is stacked, and they've been to the UIL 3A State Tournament three years in-a-row. They're looking to make it trip number four."

"We lost that first time and then we ended up losing again my junior, so Redemption II means it's time for our second redemption," Rylan Freeman, London senior pitcher, said.

The Pirates roster features a lot of seniors. A group of guys that have played ball together for a long time.

"Well I mean we got 10 seniors, so my son (Landon) being one of them and my younger son being a freshman (Aiden)," Trey Salinas, London hitting coach, eighth season, said. "I'm really looking forward to a really special year."

London enters the season ranked third in the Texas High School Baseball 3A preseason poll.

"The thing is we've all grown together as a bond since we were very little, and we've all just played baseball every single year," Freeman said. "Every single time together, and for it to be our senior year which is the most special year for all of us it really just puts that bond together even more."

Last year, London ended the season in the state semifinals with 32 wins, 4 losses and 1 tie. They're strength is their defense with a lot of experience coming back like Mason Jacob, R.J. Olivares, Landon Salinas and more.

"The speed that we have we cover a lot of ground," Salinas said. "I really feel like the pitchers if they throw strikes they can trust that our defense is gonna be where they need to be in making those plays."

London returns a stacked pitching staff led by seniors Blayne Lyne, Blake Watters, Rylan Freeman and Ethan Ortega.

"Oh we're loaded. We've got a bunch of arms we can throw anytime we need," Lyne, London senior pitcher, said. "I want to say we have nine or 10 guys that can go out there anytime they need and just throw strikes for us and get us to win ball games."

The gameplan to make it back to state is to play as a team and take each outing one opponent at a time.

"They coaches are really strong in just saying like, 'hey, next practice make it the first day." Lyne said. "It needs to be the first day practice again, again and again, so everyday we need to have the best practice we possibly can. Just go out there, compete and win ball games."

The Pirates start their baseball season with a scrimmage against the Corpus Christi King Mustangs on Saturday at noon.