Photo courtesy of Greg Devereaux Photography Pictured above is the Lakeview baseball team. Player identification was not available at press time.

COTTONWOOD –This year will include some firsts for the Lakeview baseball team. It will be their first time playing in roughly two years after having last season canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic and they’ll have a brand new coach leading the charge.

Noah Funk takes over at the helm for the Lakers and said he’s just trying to get to know his players after not being around them last year.

“With this being my first year, I’m trying to get to know the guys,” he said. “I’ve been telling the team to be ready because you never know who might be out due to COVID-19 or contact tracing. And then I just want to help them; this is a team that wants to win really bad and that’s my job to help them do that.”

Lakeview will have four returning players, including three seniors in Aaron Lienemann, Brock Kvistad and Connor Larsen. Funk said a key area of strength will be their team defense as well as their pitching.

“We have a good mentality on defense and our pitching,” he said. “We’re working on our hitting, but hopefully with more playing time, the better we get.”

During the first couple of weeks of practices, Funk said they’ve been focusing on their defense and just learning all of their systems.

“We really only had about a week and a half to practice before our first game,” he said. “A lot of our focus has been on defense and learning the different systems.”

Funk added he expects his group to compete each day and play with a lot of drive and focus.

“They want to win, so they’re ready to go. I just expect them to play hard, whether we’re up or down by a lot,” he said. “That’s what I’ve seen from them so far.”