The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Chief Sports Editor

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

After winning the last two senior boys’ softball titles, the Nassau Christian Academy Crusaders were hoping to carry their success over to the Bahamas Association of Independent Secondary Schools’ baseball season.

But on day one of the league’s transformation from softball to baseball, the Crusaders suffered an 8-2 defeat at the hands of the Kingsway Academy Saints yesterday in one of the two senior boys’ games played at the Baillou Hills Sporting Complex.

The other game saw the Lyford Cay Dragons, who joined the BAISS about three years ago, make their debut in baseball with an 11-4 loss to the Temple Christian Suns.

Saints 8, Crusaders 2

After falling behind 2-0 at the end of the second inning, Kingsway Academy went on a scoring rampage, scoring all of their runs in the third to march past Nassau Christian Academy in a three-inning affair due to the one and-a-half time limit. No official stats were available, but starting third baseman Tyler Nairn got the win in relief, while Sanchez Rolle suffered the loss.

Kingsway Academy’s coach Marco Lightbourne said it was a good way to kick off the initial baseball season in the BAISS and they are looking forward to making their presence felt.

“I think the team did a good job, even though we had a slow start,” Lightbourne pointed out. “We expect to be the top team. We expect to be the team to beat. We just have to learn to pick up the runners on base and score more runs.”

NCA’s coach Ainsworth Beckford said coming off their last two victories in softball, he anticipated that his Crusaders would have been better prepared for baseball.

“We had a couple of guys from the softball team on our baseball team, so the expectations were a little high,” Beckford said. “But the reality came right into our face today and we were found wanting.

“Our players went out there and gave it their best, but the reality is that it’s two totally different sports and unfortunately, we came out on the losing end today.”

He noted that their outfielders have to do a much better job on the bigger field of play and they have to pick up their intensity on the defensive end because it’s no more lob pitching as it is in softball.

Suns 11, Dragons 4: No official stats were available for this game as well. But Temple Christian took the early lead and maintained that cushion the rest of the five innings to complete the 1hr and 30 min time frame.

Temple Christian’s coach Arsenio Smith said his Suns’ did a quick job at the last minute to put their team together.

“We realized that we would not have enough to make up our junior and senior boys teams, so we decided to bring our juniors up and hopefully this will allow them to get the exposure for next year,: Smith said.

Smith noted that if they can beef up their offensive attack, they will be in a much better position to score more runs because they have the defensive skills to hold their opponents.

“We expect to finish in the top three. We are going to be very competitive,” he insisted. “These guys are very dedicated and I think they will give it all they have.”

Despite the loss, Lyford Cay’s coach Trae Sweeting said he was still proud of the efforts of his Dragons’ squad.

“There were some moments on the field that I felt we could have controlled, but it kind of got away from us,” Sweeting said. “But I have to be honest, that was the first time a lot of these guys ever played baseball.

“I’m excited that we actually have baseball in the high school system. Lyford Cay is a new school when it comes down to baseball, but we are planning on growing and this was an awesome opportunity for us to establish ourselves.”

Sweeting, however, said it was amazing that his Dragons were able to stay right there with the more experienced .

“As the season goes on, we’re going to get a whole lot better,” Sweeting insisted. “This year is really about growing our baseball; program and in the western area, so I was proud of them, especially my starting pitcher Andreas Clayton, who is only 13 years old.”

Softball]/baseball kicks off BAISS season

As the conveyer for softball for girls and baseball for boys, Beckles said they had a challenge getting all of the schools to get ready for the transition from softball to baseball for the boys.

“The chal;lenge is that we have limited facilities to play baseball, but we identified about five fields to get all of the games in,” he said. “With the schools playing baseball for the first time, they have to adjust to some rules that force them to use more than one pitcher, based on the amount of innings they can pitch.”

But he said they have finally gotten baseball into the schools and they are going to press forward and hopefully in the years to come, it will become just as popular as softball was for the boys.

Ten teams are playing senior boys baseball with games on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, while six are in the junior division, which will play on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The senior girls will have ten teams playing softball on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the junior girls, who will play on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays, will be reduced to five teams participating.