It has been a hectic June for incoming freshmen and sophomore baseball players at Escalon, as they have taken part in several tournaments, getting on the diamond on a regular basis.

Ken Baptista, head coach for the JV baseball team at EHS, is also coaching the team this summer and said they have been to the Downey Tournament, the Modesto Tournament and, this past week, hosted the Bob Loureiro Invitational at Escalon.

They went 1-3 at Downey and 2-2 at Modesto, then won one and lost three in the Loureiro tournament.

“There were eight teams there, we had two divisions of four,” Baptista explained.

Escalon, Modesto, Beyer and Turlock were in one division with Gregori, Oakdale, Enochs and Downey in the other.

Escalon lost close games to Modesto and Turlock in their division while falling big to Beyer. They then defeated Enochs pretty easily to salvage one win in the tournament, as the final day of the tourney matched up teams from the two divisions against each other based on the records of the first three days. Top teams in the tourney were Beyer and Gregori.

The squad has four wins and eight losses through the first three tournaments of the summer season.

“We’re young, still getting the kinks out and there are a lot of physical mistakes right now, but that’s going to happen,” Baptista explained. “We have a lot of sophomores that didn’t get a lot of playing time during the season and we’re just seeing the new incoming freshmen, it’s not a lot of kids but there is potential there.”

The young team wraps up the summer with a return to Modesto for another tournament this week; they were scheduled to play Pitman on Monday, June 25; Modesto on Tuesday and Enochs on Wednesday, with Thursday’s opponent to be determined.

“It’s another good summer, getting the kids used to high school baseball,” said Baptista.