The Purdy baseball team knows it’s good.
“We’re very confident. Maybe a little arrogant,” said Head Coach Josh Hughes with a laugh.
“I believe we can run with any team we play,” added senior Trey Hughes.
“Sometimes a little too confident,” echoed senior Ezequiel Garcia.
And why not? The Eagles have eight starters and seven seniors back from last year’s team that went 23-3.
“You’ve got to be able to back it up,” Trey said. “You’ve got to be able to back up your talk. And I believe we do that.”
They’re on pace to have another great year. But with Covid wiping out their freshman year, these eight seniors don’t want to be the first class to miss out on a district title in at least fifteen years. “For them to have that in front of them, it’s kind of like dangling the carrot in front of the nose type of thing,” Hughes said.
With that pressure, Coach Hughes’ twin sons Trey and Travis keep things loose, right down to their choice of uniform numbers. Travis chose number one. “I chose three,” Trey joked. “I was the third born in my family. He wasn’t number one. He’s got a big head and big ego.”
While Travis hit a home run in practice while the cameras were rolling, Trey is actually number one on the team in home runs and RBIs. They’ll put their sibling rivalry aside in their quest to get back to the district title game, where they lost last year to Marionville 3-1.
“That’d be big,” said senior Bosten Goetz. “Something we’ve all thought about our whole lives playing together. It’d be pretty cool to run together and jump up in the air together.”
This group has an air of confidence that this is the year Purdy gets back to its district-winning ways.
