Young Bulldogs aim to keep building

The Hampton-Dumont-CAL Bulldogs baseball team hopes to keep building as the team nears the end of the regular season. The Bulldogs are currently 7-16 on the year after going 3-2 this past week with a 5-2 win over Clarion-Goldfield-Dows on June 17, a 9-6 win over West Fork on June 18, a 7-3 loss to Algona on June 19, a 11-3 loss to Algona on June 19, and a 11-6 win over Iowa Falls-Alden on June 21.

Bulldogs head coach Matt Lokenvitz said that so far the season has been good so far for the young and inexperienced Bulldogs.

“We had to grow and get some innings in and see how well our younger players can develop,” Lokenvitz said. “We have been trending up and are playing some really good baseball right now.”

With getting experience throughout the year, Lokenvtiz said that it helps build the team’s confidence especially as they get closer to the playoffs and play some tough teams.

“It gives them confidence that they can play with anybody. We are seeing a lot of good pitching and so they can go into games knowing it doesn’t matter who they pitch as we have seen some good pitching and that confidence is going to help them,” Lokenvitz said.

Heading into the final regular season games, Lokenvitz said that one thing he would like to see from the Bulldogs is to see the team continue to grow and to continue to play in close games.

“We went from early on in the season where we were getting 10 runs scored on us and we were getting beat up pretty bad by some teams,” Lokenvitz said. “And now we are competing in every game that we play. So I want to keep taking steps forward and playing in these tight games. If you keep playing in tight games you are going to start winning a few of them and start having some of that success.”

One strength for the Bulldogs throughout this year has been the growth in the team’s confidence according to Lokenvitz. Another strength for the team is how the level of play by the team’s seniors has been motivating the younger players to try to get to that level as well.

An area that Lokenvitz said he wants the team to improve on and clean up on is to cut down the amount of walks their pitchers give up.

“We’ve got to cut down on our walks as a pitching staff,” Lokenvitz said. “We were not very good at it at the beginning of the season. We are getting better at it but we are still not great. So we need to continue to cut down on that and trust the defense to play behind them. I think it is trending up and is getting better and I think we are going to continue to see improvement in that.If you mix that with how I would really like us to play a full game together. We are having four or five innings stretches of really good baseball and we will have one or two innings where they are not really high energy and we are not showing that confidence level. So if we could really work on those two things I think we are going to be pretty good towards the end of the year.

The team’s next game is on the road on June 26 at Clear Lake at 7:30 p.m.