By Jason Benedek, Sports Editor
Coming off of a 2022 Howard County Championship, The River Hill Baseball team is looking to repeat their dominance for the upcoming spring baseball season and be in contention for a state championship run as well.
Second Year Head Coach Craig Estrain will be leading the way again this year after an impressive run with the team during his “rookie” head coaching campaign. Although there is a lot of hype for this team, Coach Craig knows the key to success is to “let the kids play the game and have fun doing it.”
Numerous leadership roles on this team will need to be filled due to ten seniors graduating last year: Ryan Pickus, Matt Rogers, Ryan Jee, Daniel Sheehan, Michael Flaim, Charlie Colvin, Sean McGowan, Will Kilcoyne, and Will Zatkowski. However, that shouldn’t be too big of a problem. The team this year will have five star studded seniors: Colin Chan, Brady Young, Eje Okojie, Riley Finkelston, and Demetre Koutras.
Of those five, three are going on to play at the next level after high school. Riley is committed to Cedarville University, Demetre is committed to Penn State, Harrisburg, and Eje, coming off of an amazing MVP runner-up season, is still undecided as to where he will be playing next year, but does plan on playing in college and has multiple offers. Demetre and Eje are also coming off all-county seasons.
“Really, we just want to go farther than we did the past 2 years,” stated Eje, “the team last year and the year before were both amazing teams that didn’t make it as far as we wanted to in the state playoffs. This year we have less seniors but more overall experience. A lot of us have been on varsity for the past 2 seasons, so we are hungry to make a deep playoff run.” With high expectations for the season, the seniors are willing to do anything for a State Championship.
When asked about what he learned from his first year of coaching, Coach Craig said, “It all starts with pitching and if you’re fortunate enough to have 2-3 guys you can give the ball to every week you should have plenty of success. The exciting part of [this coming season] is that we have five starters coming back including HOCO pitcher of the year and Duke University recruit Henry Zatkowski.” Henry committed to Duke University this past fall, and is projected to have an insane season. When asked how he feels about all the hype following his recent commitment, Henry stated, “I do feel some pressure but I feel confident in my abilities to push through and have a great season.”
The season opener will be against Whitman High School on Saturday 11 March, and the first in-county game will be against Mount Hebron on Tuesday21 March. With expectations higher than ever, the River Hill Baseball Team is looking to exceed those expectations, and bring home a state championship. In preparation for the season, Brady Young explained, “I’m looking forward to accomplishing even greater things than we did last year, and avenging our previous seniors with the same core group. Our goals are to bring back the Regional Championship and eventually a State Championship for the first time in 15 years.”