Warhawks return to diamond
The U18 Warhawks are 3-2 at time of writing, a big feat considering their youth according to head coach Jesse Lahache. Courtesy Jesse Lahache
Minor baseball is well underway in Kahnawake, with the 12 Warhawks teams already having played a handful of games.
Minor baseball president Terry Stacey is happy to see Kahnawa’kehró:non make their way back to the ballfield.
“I’m just glad it’s back. It’s been a long enough spring and winter. It took forever to get rid of that snow,” said Stacey.
“Everybody’s happy to be on the field and getting going again.”
Four of the 12 teams are tee-ball, and the other eight are spread out across different age groups; there are three U9 teams, two boys’ and one girls’ team, one U11 mixed team, one U13 mixed team, one U15 girls’ team, one U18 mixed team, and the Junior team.
The lack of a team for male players between U13 and U18 has meant that the latter, coached by Jesse Lahache, is a particularly young team this year as eligible U15 players were moved up to the older age group.
“We’re a young squad, and for U18, I have a lot of 15, 16-year-olds. I have maybe two 18-year-olds and two 17-year-olds,” said Lahache.
The team is 3-2 after five games - their sixth game will be played Thursday night after The Eastern Door’s publishing deadline - which is a good start for the team in Lahache’s eyes.
“We’re right in the middle of the pack with everybody, which is amazing, because we are such a young team,” said Lahache.
He credits their resilience and early success to the time spent by many of the players on the field working on their game.
“I’ve got a very encouraging team. My top seven players are the kids that always show up to practice. They’re always committed. They’re always putting the work in to help everybody else out and make this team better,” said Lahache.
He has been holding practices with the team since April.
“It’s been three months of practicing with the same kids, and you see the level of difference between those kids to the kids that don’t show up to do the work. The work is being put in by them, and then the other ones are just taking longer to get there,” said Lahache.
Three years may not seem like much of a difference in age, but in baseball, 15-year-olds facing adults on the mound are totally different animals, and something the younger players will have to get used to as the season progresses.
He estimates that the team will continue to hover around .500 until the end of school, when players will have more time to dedicate to the diamond. After that, anything can happen in the playoffs.
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Despite many instances of weather that would be inconvenient for a baseball game in the last few weeks, Stacey said that they have had very few rainouts, with teams sometimes playing through the light rain showers instead of calling games - and he’s hoping it will stay that way.
“Hopefully the weather is good for the whole summer. We don’t have a lot of fields available, so right now, rainouts would hurt a lot,” said Stacey.
Regular season games for minor baseball will be played throughout the summer in town and in the Lac St. Louis region until August.
