The Altoona Area School District has added a new baseball team for seventh and eighth graders.  The coach is eighth grade teacher Cameron Kyle.

“Junior high baseball is a great chance for younger guys to learn how to play in a structured program.  Those students will then go on to help our high school program in either a year or two,” Coach Cameron Kyle said.

They will play teams that are in their region.  

“We play St. Mary’s first game, then mostly teams around our area,” Kyle said.

In order to join the team, students had to tryout.

“It is a very competitive tryout,” Kyle said.

The new team has already had to make some decisions that could benefit the team or could hurt them in the future.

“We had to cut some highly skilled players to create the best two rosters in the school,” Kyle said.

The team has formed and been set-up recently.  Tryouts began on March 4, and the team was finalized March 7.

“We haven’t stopped practicing since tryouts,” Kyle said.

Their first game is March 26.

“We can’t wait!” Kyle said.