PENDLETON — To continue momentum gained at the end of last season, Pendleton Heights’ baseball team will have to get contributions from players new to the rigors of varsity level baseball, as well as, overcome some early-season adversity.

In 2021, the Arabians won eight of their last 11 ball games and reached the sectional championship before losing to Mt. Vernon, which went on to the Class 4A semistate.

Many of the key contributors from last season have graduated, plus the Arabians will be without junior standout pitcher Ricky Howell, becasue of a foot injury, to start the 2022 campaign.

Another veteran pitcher, Jackson Garner, like Howell, will start the season on the shelf with a foot injury.

Howell went 4-3 last year with a 2.22 earned run average. He had 64 strikeouts in 63 innings pitched. Garner went 1-3 with a 2.49 ERA and one save in 19.2 innings.

The most veteran pitcher on the staff to start the season will be senior Matt Roark, but he’s coming back from an injury that put him out in the middle of last year. He threw 23.2 innings and had a 4.14 ERA.

What head coach Matt Vosburgh hopes benefits his club is the strength of the Arabian program, which has yearly replaced graduated players with standouts-to-be.

The late run to wrap up 2021 got the Arabians back to the .500 mark, finishing 16-16. They have finished .500 or better every season since 2010. In 2009, Pendleton Heights went 13-15, but won the sectional. To find an under-.500 year without a post season title you have to go all the way back to 1982.

“It’s an opportunity for guys. Every team is going to face adversity throughout the course of a season,” Vosburgh said. “Maybe it’s in our cards to get through that adversity and figure some things out to start the year.

“You’ve got a big program with a lot of guys that are skilled enough to do the job,” Vosburgh added. “It spells opportunity for these guys. Once those guys come back, we may see our roster alter even more. Guys are getting opportunities on the varsity roster that might not otherwise, and it’s up to them whether they want to capitalize. Adversity brings opportunity.”

Senior Caleb Frakes, who will move from second base to shortstop, is the most experienced in the Arabian lineup. He hit .289 a year ago and had a team-high three triples to go with 11 stolen bases and 14 RBI. He’ll also move to the leadoff spot.

Senior Sam Conner, who will play first base and also pitch, is next up in plate appearances with 79 in 27 games. He hit .281 and drove in 12.

Junior Clayton Turner, who can play in the outfield and infield, got in 10 games a year ago. He has impressed in the preseason and is expected to be a key element in 2022.

Behind the plate, junior Nate Gilmet, the primary backup at catcher in 2021, and junior Quin DeVault both have played in varsity games and will be vying for time.

“We’ve got a bunch of guys that are still competing for spots,” Vosburgh said. “We’ve said from Day 1, when we organized our roster this year, we’ve got 46 guys in the program and it doesn’t matter if you’re a freshman to senior, you have to go out and compete for these spots.

“We’re very junior heavy right now. We only have five seniors. They are good pieces to our overall lineup, and our juniors are competing to fill the rest of those roles throughout the field and lineup.”

Along with a healthier Roark and senior Conner, who did not pitch at the varsity level last year, Vosburgh expects to get help on the hill from juniors Jalen Jordan and Spencer Leppink and sophomore Clint Miller.

“It’s kind of that next man up mentality,” Vosburgh said of filling the absence of Howell and Garner.

“We’re hopeful and optimistic they will be back at some point during the season. We are pretty deep in pitching this year. We have a lot of guys that we feel confident that can get out on the mound, throw strikes, keep guys off balance and get meaningful innings for us.”

Leppink, in the infield, and Miller, in the outfield, are slated to have spots when they are not pitching. Junior Aidan Clay, who played well last weekend in a scrimmage at Bloomington South, will get a look at third base.

The Arabians were scheduled to get their season underway Tuesday (March 29), jumping right in with a Hoosier Heritage Conference two-game series with New Castle. After a game in New Castle Tuesday, the teams were slated to play again Wednesday in Pendleton.

“One of things I was most proud of our group last year, by the end of our season we had some things figured out,” Vosburgh said. “We were playing our best baseball by then. We went through a rough patch in the middle of the year and we had guys stick with it and believed in what we were doing.

“We finished almost as big of a high as you could, just shy of winning a sectional championship. I hope that belief and that mentality and understanding of what it takes to get the job done, come tournament time, and the process that it takes to get there (continues this season). The season is not going to be decided the first two weeks. We want to be playing our best baseball at the end of the season, when it matters most.”