Coaches’ Corner: Trent Dunavant

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The Canyon Lake Hawks finished the weekend with three very winnable games, but the ‘young’ guns finished with one win.

The Hawks are in a learning portion of the season as the team will be playing bigger schools for several games before the first district game in two weeks.

Coach Dunavant: “Yeah, we have a tough schedule, there are no slouches. The Canyon tournament expanded this year and we were caught playing larger schools. We are going with the phrase, ‘What doesn’t kill you will make you stronger’.”

Tell us about the just finished Lockhart Tournament and your thoughts coming out of that game.

Coach Dunavant: “The tournament had as good of pitching as we will see all year. The team got to see some different ‘in game’ situations that they not might see until later in the year.

You had double steals, the team fighting from behind, and many other happenings in the game will make us stronger as the season gets going.”

What have you seen from the players so far in this young season?

Coach Dunavant: “I was talking with Coach (Bret) Hodges over the weekend and we were noting that we have eight of our nine positions being played by someone new this year. The team needs to learn how to look ahead two or three batters in the game, then the maturity will start to show.

We were ahead in the two games we lost and that will allow us to work on teaching the team on how to hold a lead. The boys started pressing as the game was getting away from them and we need to get them to let the game come to them instead of pressing and trying to make it happen.”

Give us an overall assessment of the season so far.

Coach Dunavant: “I think we are ahead of where we were this time last year with our defense.

The hitting has some  room to grow at this stage.

The pitching has our arms in good shape. We don’t want to work the pitches that will hurt their arms this early in the season. The curve and change up are all about how they feel during the game.

The pitchers need to pitch to contact and allow the defense to help, even if the opponent hits the ball, then we still have a good chance to get an out seven to eight out of ten times.