Semoball

Portageville baseball, softball begin quests today to meet "expectations"

Portageville High School baseball coach Tyler Trover speaks with his team and the Bulldog community following his team's 5-3 loss to Russellville in the MSHSAA Class 2 State Championship at US Ballpark in Ozark, Mo., last spring.
Dennis Marshall ~ Sikeston Standard-Democrat

PORTAGEVILLE – Throughout the 2022-23 school year, Portageville High School has won MSHSAA District championships in three of the four sports that it has participated in, so far.

The girl’s basketball program did so with a win over two-time defending champion Twin Rivers on Saturday, while the baseball and softball programs begin their quest for a championship(s) with the opening of spring practice today.

“Our kids and our coaches are so bought into the idea of where we are trying to go,” Bulldog athletic director and baseball coach Tyler Trover said, “that we have defined goals. Do we reach those goals every single time? Obviously, not.

“But it keeps that idea of competitiveness and being relevant important.”

The Portageville baseball program has been “relevant” for some time.

The Bulldogs have won five District titles in the past eight seasons, and advanced to the MSHSAA Class 2 State Championship game last spring, before falling 5-3 to Russellville.

When Trover took over the program in 2017, he had “defined goals,” which his program has met.

“When we first launched,” Trover explained, “we wanted to be competitive in the District every year. We wanted to be relevant in our conference and District annually.

“Did that mean winning 31 games and playing for a state title? No, but it made me want to be relevant.”

Trover’s first team won a District title, but his second did not.

He feels winning a championship in that third season (2019) really impacted the psyche of his players.

“The hardest thing to do is to establish yourself,” Trover explained. “This is who we are. This is what our expectations are. After that second one, now the snowball was rolling in the right direction because now you have a culture starting to build.”

Portageville has not had a losing season since 2012, and being the defending state runner-ups, every baseball team throughout Southeast Missouri is cognizant of the Bulldogs, who will open the 2023 season on March 18 against Carthage at the Van Buren Wooden Bat Weekend at 1 p.m.

“The expectation (of success) is starting to build,” Trover continued, “and you have to live up to that expectation.

"The only way to live up to that expectation is by the work that you put in each and every day."

For first-year Bulldog softball coach Kelsey Snider, her task is dissimilar to Trover's.

The Portageville softball program was established in recent years but hasn’t had a winning season since 2017, a year in which the Bulldogs won the first of two consecutive District titles.

Snider came to Portageville from Clarkton and will have 32 student-athletes out for practice today.

“I’ll have 32 kids,” Snider said, “which is good because we’ll have a JV and a varsity (team). I would like to play a lot of JV games and get the younger players working a lot harder and getting a lot of games in and getting fundamentally sound for the upcoming years.”

Snider has been working with her players since last summer, but the first official day of practice, outside, on a real diamond, is “different,” according to the coach.

“We have been (training),” Snider said, “but it has been indoors. There is something different about being outdoors. It is so much different when you get out on the field. It becomes way more real and the girls are way more excited.”

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