Lakers stress conditioning

Legwork, more legwork and for good measure, a little more legwork.

That's been the practice experience of the Kalispell Lakers baseball team as it prepares for the 2005 American Legion baseball season.

Two new coaches hired this year to assist third year head coach Mike McFarland are behind the added exercise.

Jesse Hedeen is a recent graduate of Concordia University in Portland while Beau Mathiason recently graduated from Northern Iowa.

They were both pitchers with their respective college programs - and both believe in conditioning.

"They're helping a lot," McFarland said. "It's a different coaching staff, it's brought some new techniques, training emphasis. There's a strong emphasis on conditioning.

"In the past, any conditioning we did prior to this, we did preseason," he said.

"It's tough," said Laker outfielder Michael Crail.

"There's a lot of running."

There's also been a lot of squat lunges, bear crawls and several other leg-specific exercises.

"It is helping," said outfielder Stefan Malkuch.

And the fact that Hedeen and Mathiason are willing to jump in and work out right alongside the guys "makes interacting with them a lot easier," Crail said.

"I think the team is more united than last year," he added. "You can really sense that (in practice)."

"I think we'll do better than last year," Malkuch agreed. "Last year, we were always fighting. This year, it's like a whole different program."

"It's a great atmosphere," McFarland agreed.

"It's nice to go to practice. It's nice everybody has the same goals. It's nice to come to practice - but it's just we want to start playing.

"Everybody is working really hard. I just think it's another year of maturity for these guys."

Crail has set his personal goal to be a team leader for the Lakers.

"I want to get the team excited and hopefully get a good seed (for the state tournament)," he said.

The Lakers qualified for the 2004 state tournament as the host team.

"I want to get where we deserve a spot in that state tournament," he said.

"I want our team to get to state really bad," Malkuch agreed.

Other encouraging news is the experience level has gone up one more year.

"We were really young last year," McFarland said.

Kalispell is hoping to reap the benefits this year.

"I think we have an outstanding defense.

"Our outfield (Malkuch, Crail and Nick Hergesheimer) is still really strong," he said.

"They cover a lot of ground. They have strong arms, they communicate well and they all hit.

The Lakers also return Dan Connors at shortstop, Craig Olson at first base/pitcher and pitcher Tom Gregory. Pitcher/third baseman Ben Mathiason will also return to the team in June.

"There are a couple of positions still up in the air, but they're getting straightened out," the coach said.

The biggest questions at the moment are second base and catcher.

"They are all capable people," the coach said of the boys working toward those positions. "We're just not sure who's the No. 1 guy. There are several people working very hard," he said.

Offensively, the biggest key for the Lakers is consistency.

The bottom half of the order last year simply wasn't consistent.

The middle of the order was strong, but teams found they could pitch around the likes of Malkuch and Jesse Roehl to get to those lower spots.

"They didn't do bad, they were just inconsistent," McFarland said.

The Lakers play host to the Missoula Mavericks at 3 p.m. Saturday - a nonconference doubleheader to start the season.