St. Clair High School’s spring sports teams are preparing for the upcoming season.
Spring sports at St. Clair are baseball, girls soccer, golf and boys and girls track and field.
Baseball
Rob Hauck returns as head coach of the St. Clair baseball squad.
“Practices have been going good so far this season. We’ve had some rough conditions and time on the field has been limited, but our boys are making the best of a bad situation,” Hauck said. “Other teams in the area have been stuck in the gym, just as we have, so we are doing the most that we can.”
Hauck likes the makeup of his team.
“The varsity team has seven returning starters, with five of those being seniors,” he said. “We feel confident that this will be a successful season for our team. With all of these returning players, plus some new additions to the team, we think we will be competitive in everything we do.”
St. Clair is scheduled to open the baseball season Saturday at Farmington at noon.
Next week, the Bulldogs play in the Four Rivers Classic. They are in Pool B with Washington and Festus.
St. Clair visits Washington Monday and hosts Festus Wednesday, March 20. Game times are set for 4:30 p.m.
The finals are scheduled for Saturday, March 23.
“It’s been difficult to tell where each player is because of being inside, but there are some great competitions for playing time this year,” Hauck said. “We have a tough start to our season, playing several strong teams right off the bat. We hope to find our groove and play our best ball at the end of the year.”
Golf
Casey Korn begins his first season as St. Clair’s golf coach.
The Bulldogs will play their home meets at Meramec Lakes Golf Course in St. Clair.
“It’s been a cold start to our practices, but we still have been able to get out to the course,” Korn said. “We have a group that is willing to come in and work on their game every day. We’ll see how they progress throughout the year.”
St. Clair opens its golf season Wednesday, March 20, against Washington and Borgia at Wolf Hollow Golf Club at 3:30 p.m.
Girls Soccer
Ted Koenigsfeld returns as head coach of the St. Clair girls soccer team.
“We have 26 girls in the program. I wish we had a little more, but that’s not bad,” Koenigsfeld said. “We’ll attempt to play a full junior varsity schedule along with our varsity schedule.”
Top varsity returners from last season include senior midfielders Nicole Nardi and Veronica Guerra, junior midfielder/defender Heather Pendegraft, junior goalie Sam Deason and sophomore forward Tori Martin.
“The weather hasn’t been great for our practices, but with our turf, we’ve had more opportunities to be outside than other teams,” Koenigsfeld said. “Hopefully we’ll use that to our advantage early in the season.”
The Lady Bulldogs open their season Friday and Saturday at the Warrenton Round-Robin Tournament.
The schedule for St. Clair at Warrenton is Friday at 4:30 p.m. against Sullivan followed by Saturday games against Kirksville at 11 a.m. and Warrenton at 3 p.m.
St. Clair then visits Union Monday at 5 p.m.
Track and Field
Dave Purviance (boys) and Brent Yule (girls) are the head coaches for the St. Clair track and field teams.
“I’m really excited for this track season,” Yule said. “We have a lot of talent returning and our athletes have been working really hard at practices and throughout our offseason.”
The boys team also has high expectations.
“We have 39 boys out for the track team this year, nine freshmen, nine sophomores, 11 juniors and 10 seniors,” Purviance said. “The weather has slowed our field event work, but we have been able to work hard on the track.”
St. Clair opens the season at its home meet Tuesday, March 19, against Hermann, New Haven, Cuba and Viburnum starting at 4 p.m.
