By Jeremy McDonald

jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com

MOUNT ANGEL, Ore.–  Kennedy’s Jenna Hopkins has entered her junior season as captain of the Trojan team.  Embracing the role while taking lessons from the senior class from last year and taking it into this year to help lead a young Kennedy squad on the diamond.

It’s something that she doesn’t take lightly Hopkins points out, considering all the new faces.  There was one or two points in Friday afternoon’s game against Grant Union in which Hopkins helped point out and guide her teammates in-game in trying to get them up to speed two games into the season.

“It’s something that I don’t take lightly, especially since we have a lot of people who hasn’t played in a couple of years, so I feel like I need to take that role to help them and teach them,” Hopkins said.  “I actually think we did pretty good because it’s our second game and everyone is in a new position.

“So, it’s really important to me to help them as much as I can.”

Kennedy were without two of their players due to FFA State for Friday’s game, but the Trojans held the Prospectors to one run going into the third inning.  The run coming in the first inning as Hopkins picked up three of her nine strikeouts in the second inning.

Slowly however, the youth of Kennedy showed.  Little hits here and there, mixed in with a few errors allowed Grant Union to slowly pull away in the 15-0, five-inning game that went in favor of the Prospectors.

Defense will be a big vocal point moving forward points Hopkins as they’ll play St. Paul Tuesday back at Mount Angel at 2pm.

“I think we can focus on cutting down on the errors because we could’ve stopped a few of those big runs at the start, but we couldn’t make those.  But focusing on our defense will be big,” “Our offense is coming along, (Grant Union Pitcher) Drew (Williams) isn’t a bad pitcher, and we did a pretty good job against her.

“It’s good to have really good competition at the start of the season because we do have a big name going into the year and a lot of new people, so we really to vamp up the competition.  It’s good for our team to face the really good competition like that, especially if we make it to the playoffs because we’ll be facing teams like a Grant Union again.”

Williams struck out eight in five innings to seven that Hopkins had.  Hopkins went 2-for-2 hitting with Grace Talbot and Morgan Kyle picking up a hit apiece for the Trojans.

Photos By Jeremy McDonald