Tiger baseball opens against Emmett this afternoon

The Mountain Home Tigers open their baseball season at Emmett this afternoon in a conference game against the Huskies.

Mountain Home is coming off a 17-12 season last year that saw them qualify for the 4A State Baseball Tournament in Nampa, where they lost two straight close ball games.

Tiger head baseball coach Travis DeVore was pleased with this year's turnout for baseball.

"We had a pretty strong turnout. For the first time in a while, we had strong numbers in all four classes, which, that hasn't been the case lately. We've been having big senior classes, last year was a small freshman class and we had a couple more sophomores come out this year, quite a few freshmen came out, so the numbers have evened out, and actually I'm pretty pleased, with all things being considered. It's nice to have enough guys out here where we feel like we can make some decisions."

Coach DeVore's been without five of his players that were on the Tiger basketball team that went to state.

"We're not technically done with tryouts, and we won't be until those guys get through with basketball, but hat's off to the basketball team! It's awesome this year with all the success and all the teams that have gone to state, girls basketball, boys basketball, and we want a winning tradition in Mountain Home, so we'll take a minor setback to start our season for sure.

"We've got five guys that are playing basketball, and we've yet to get to see them on the baseball field.

"We go into conference games Wednesday, and we'll only have a couple of practices with them before we get going, but we're proud of what they've done, so we'll live with it and the guys that are here working hard right now, so we'll make the most of the additional practices we'll have and go root the guys on at Borah."

Coach DeVore sees a tight race for the SIC 4A crown this season.

"It's going to be tight. We saw it last year in the district tournament that anyone was capable of beating anyone, and we end up with Skyview and BK in the championship game at state.

"There's going to be a lot of tough teams, and I think Bishop Kelly is going to be tough again. They lost their number one pitcher, but they've got a heck of a number one coming back this year, and then Skyview only lost a couple of players, they were some big players, but, they only lost a couple, and the rest of the conference will be good.

"Nampa's going to compete, Emmett's going to be very strong this year, Middleton's going to be better, because they didn't lose very many kids, and had a lot of young kids last year, so we're going to have to get out of the gates in a hurry, and it doesn't start easy, opening with Emmett, and a couple of non-conference games against Timberline, which they're going to be dynamite this year, and then, of course, Bishop Kelly in the second week of conference play.

"So we're going to have our work cut out for us, but I also have a ton of confidence in these guys. We've got some tremendous players that are going to step up for us this year."

The Tigers open this afternoon at 5 p.m. at Emmett, and host the Huskies at home tomorrow. Saturday they go to Timberline to take on the always tough Timberline Wolves.