Jackson baseball looking ahead to 2025 campaign

It was another impressive year by area baseball teams in 2024.

One of those clubs was the Jackson Indians, who had an impressive 25-8 season after graduating a wildly successful senior class.

Losing the talent they did after the 2023 season, it was unclear how the Indians would bounce back in 2024.

“The great thing about last year’s group is they set the standard for what we’re going to shoot for,” Indians coach Josh Roach said. “It laid the foundation for the guys that were apart of that and saw that. We went into the season knowing that we were going to be young and knowing we were going to have guys step into roles that needed to be filled.”

However, out of the gates, the Indians didn’t seem fazed, as they began the year 10-2.

“The schedule was pretty intense,” Roach said. “We were trying to find pieces that could fit in certain spots. The beauty of this program is we have a lot of depth.”

Roach and his staff knew last summer they would be scrambling for pitching depth as the ace of the rotation John-Paul Sauer suffered a torn ACL.

“I have to brag on our rotation,” Roach said. “We were really really good on the mound all year long. There were some surprises this year and some guys we didn’t know what they were going to do. Adrian Fox is the guy that sticks out to me. He was able to recover from an injury during football as well and he got released right as the season started. We knew that he had the potential to be a very big part of our rotation.”

The Indians concluded the season with a record of 25-8, and while they graduate a plethora of seniors, they’re returning a good core of players who played big innings for them this season.

“I’m really excited about it because a lot of the guys this year didn’t have a lot of varsity experience,” Roach said. “They now have the experience under their belt and they understand what it takes to be successful. That’s exciting because once we go into next year all of those guys are going to be a lot more comfortable.”

The comfort factor helps, but perhaps the biggest reason the Indians’ returners will be ready is because of the fuel of losing in the Class 6 District 1 tournament to Fox.

“It was a difficult way to end the season because of the expectations that we had,” Roach said. “But, failure is part of the process. Especially in baseball, you’re going to fail often.”