As baseball season kicks into gear, the players have only one thing on their minds: improving from last year and making it to playoffs. Despite falling short of this goal and facing some hard losses in past seasons, the team remains as determined as ever to make their fans proud.

“Last year it hurt not making it to playoffs and the team chemistry wasn’t where it needed to be,” junior Reid Rottino said. “We’re coming back this year more focused and have been working much harder to accomplish our goal.”

While getting to playoffs may be the ultimate goal, the team cannot achieve this without chemistry. Each player is an essential component of the team, but individual talent becomes most valuable when the whole team comes together to facilitate the unity that is crucial in making it to playoffs.

“We’ve always had solid talent on all of our teams, but sometimes we’ve had trouble becoming a unit, and without unity a team is just a group of individuals playing a game with no motivation behind it,” senior Bennett Oberstein said. “This year, we’ve become very close as a team, and all of these guys would go to war for one another.”

Aside from learning how to work together on the field, their experiences on the team have taught them valuable life lessons that can be applied off the field later in life.

“This season has taught me how to handle failure and how to stay calm through it all,” junior Jared Stover said. “If you don’t learn how to handle failure, you won’t be successful in any aspects of life.”

Since failure is an inevitable component of all sports, the players must keep a humble mindset throughout every win and never view a loss as a weakness. After all, one win does not always mean total success.

“We are staying focused by working harder every day regardless of wins or losses.” Rottino said. “We don’t let a win go to our heads because we know we still have a long road ahead of us and haven’t proven anything yet.”

Every year, the team’s sole objective is to make it to the playoffs. Competing in a more difficult district this season proves to make this goal even more of a challenge.

“It will be a tougher objective than it was last year because this district is arguably the toughest district for baseball in the state of Texas,” Oberstein said. “But I feel that we definitely have a shot to do some damage in the playoffs if we play for each other instead of ourselves.”

Playing against fierce competitors, such as defending State champion Flower Mound Marcus, will force the team to confront their fears and work harder than they ever imagined.

“We are definitely in the hardest district for baseball this year and facing some teams with lots of talent,” Rottino said. “Because of this, we have to outwork and out-hustle other teams day in and day out.”Whether or not the team wins or loses, however, is not what truly matters most. The players do not play to win, they play to put their best foot forward, no matter what. The team has more than just an honorable reputation—it has integrity.

“Our team has heart, character, and grit. It doesn’t matter if we’re down by 10 or up by 10, our foot never comes off the gas,” Oberstein said. “At the end of the day each and every person in this program wants to represent Plano West and make a run at State.”