Amarillo College baseball opens it’s inaugural season at Hodgetown

AMARILLO, Texas (KFDA) - The Amarillo College Badgers open up their inaugural baseball season with a weekend series against Luna Community College, a non-conference opponent. The Badgers have been hard at work since this past fall in preparation for this season.

Head Coach of the Badgers, Brandon Rains, already sees so much potential in this group of young men in just the little time that he has spent with them.

“Well we have a great group of guys that really work hard,” said Coach Rains. “They are very coachable, meaning they do what’s asked of them, and a lot of them do maybe more than what’s asked of them. Some really talented players for sure, and they’ve got a very tense, competitive spirit. We are very blessed, we knew that when we recruited them how good they were and what kind of players we were getting. When they got here they have gelled together so far, and have been really working hard together. Now it is just counting down the sleeps until Saturday.”

In the fall and in the preseason, Coach Rains and his coaching staff worked hard to prepare for this first season. They played eight ‘fall ball’ games in the months of September and October.

With the season officially starting this weekend, Coach Rains took the past few weeks to polish up on a few details to get ready for the Rough Riders. He is appericative of such a great coaching staff that has put in the time to help assemble this team.

“The biggest thing is on the pitching side of things, and making sure our guys are ready to go,” said Coach Rains. “Coach (Garrett) Cobb has done an amazing job with our pitching staff. He’s a local boy out of Canyon, pitched at WT (West Texas A&M), and pitched at Texas Tech. We’ve had him on for over a year here and helping us develop our pitching staff. He does such a great job of keeping our guys in line and on pace for their throwing program. Our biggest thing right now, it making sure our pitchers are ready to go.”

Another bonus to the Badgers season is that they have the opportunity to play their home games at Hodgetown, the home of the Amarillo Sod Poodles. Being able to play at the world class facility was a huge driving point for a lot of the players. It also is a huge part in getting the Amarillo community to come support AC baseball.

“I mean that’s why a lot of them came here. Obviously, Amarillo is a great place to recruit to and a great place to recruit from. Having Hodgetown as a home field, we’re basically envy of almost any team in college baseball, and including some of the SEC and Big 12 schools by being able to play there. It’s a big advantage for us recruiting. It allows us to get very speical players to come here, and we’re very excited about that for sure,” said Coach Rains.

The four game series against Luna Community College will include two doubleheaders on Saturday and Sunday. First pitch will be thrown at 12 p.m. on both days, with the second game to follow at 2:30 p.m.

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