Someone needs to tell Mother Nature it’s time to play ball.

Yes, even though temperatures are still dipping down into the thirties, baseball season will begin Thursday afternoon at Lakeside High School.

The Warriors will host the Lakeside baseball jamboree, beginning at 3:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon in Sibley.
Five schools will be in attendance, with Calvary Baptist, Evangel and Northwood driving over to compete with Lakeside and the Minden Crimson Tide.

The jamboree was originally scheduled to take place on Saturday at both Lakeside and Minden High’s Griffith Stadium, but inclement weather forced the action up a couple days.

The format for the jamboree has every team playing two, three inning games with no time limit restrictions. Teams will flip a coin to decide who is the home team, with the exception of Lakeside, who will be the home team for their pair of games. Each team is allowed the chance to take infield/outfield before the game if they wish to do so.

The scheduled start times for each game is as follows:

3:30 Evangel vs. Minden
4:30 Evangel vs. Lakeside
5:30 Calvary Baptist vs. Minden
6:30 Calvary Baptist vs. Northwood
7:30 Lakeside vs. Northwood

“In the two scrimmages we’ve hit the ball pretty well,” Crimson Tide head coach Dean Francis said. “We’ve been putting the ball in play and our pitching has held its own. We’re just going to try and get as much done as possible. That’s why you scrimmage, to learn from your mistakes and get all that out.”
The Crimson Tide will be tested right off the bat with two games against baseball powers Evangel and Calvary.

“Today with the jamboree starting, it’s the start of our season,” Francis said. “We’re going in playing defending state champions so we’ve got to be ready.”

The Lakeside Warriors are looking forward to starting their season as well.

“The vast majority of our varsity guys have been together since they were little boys,” Lakeside head coach Bob Gray said. “In both scrimmages we’ve played pretty well against pretty good ball teams.”

Lakeside will face another “pretty good” team Thursdsay when they square off with the Evangel Eagles.

The Warriors also get an early glance at the team they’ll be battling for the district title this year, the Calvary Cavaliers.

“We think we’ll be better this year,” Gray said. “When you look at our district, I think anybody can beat anyone on any given day, but Calvary is probably the clear cut favorite.”