Tara Murray
The Werribee Giants started the Baseball Victoria Summer League season with a bang with four of their five teams getting first up wins on the weekend.
The Giants’ division 2 men’s side led the way with a 6-1 win against the newly promoted North Western Titans, while their women’s side was also among the winners.
Giants’ Peter Rose said things had been good through the pre-season.
“The season is looking like it could be really good,” he said. “We’ve got good numbers for the season and we’ve got an import hopefully heading our way in the next few weeks.
“There’s a lot of players returning who didn’t play in the winter season, so they’re happy to be back on the diamond and looking forward to playing some good baseball.”
Rose said that there was a core group of players returning in the senior team, who they expected would be keys to the season.
Pitcher Trent Pantalleresco along with Oliver Box and Wade Blazer will be again pulling on the top for the Giants this season and are expected to play big roles.
Rose said they were also keen to watch one of their young stars Addison Bishop-Worn.
“He’s a top junior and has played a lot of representative baseball in the juniors,” he said.
“He’ll play in the first team as a pitcher or infielder typically.
“We have a lot of juniors coming through the lower division side.”
Rose said the club has an under-18 side this season for the first time which is good signs for the future.
Most of those players are playing in the senior sides as well. They’ve also had some players age out of under-14s and get an opportunity in the open age for the first time as well.
“It’ll be their first year of seniors so they’ll start off playing in our third team,” Rose said. “It will provide them plenty of development opportunities.”
For the first team which is on the board, Rose said while most of the players would be keen to play finals, they hadn’t set expectations of what they wanted to achieve.
“It’s too early to tell if we’ll play finals,” he said. “We’d like to, but we’re not going to have any expectations.
“It’s only week one and we’re still working out our numbers and who is in each side.”
The women’s side started their season with a thrilling 13-12 win against Essendon.
Rose said they were excited to see what their women’s side would do this year.
“This is still fairly new,” he said. “They’re in their third season and their second summer season.”
The club also has junior teams from under-12s all the way through under-18s.
Werribee’s men’s side faces Ormond Glenhuntley this Saturday in round two, while the women’s side faces Mitchell Majors.
