Photo courtesy of Hoover High School
Hoover Baseball
Reid Chandler returns as a key figure in the lineup for the Hoover High baseball team.
The unknown rules the day for Hoover baseball coach Adam Moseley, who enters his second season with the Bucs.
“No idea,” Moseley said when asked last month who his top pitchers are heading into the season. “We lost so much from last year.”
Six seniors from the 2015 squad signed scholarships to play college baseball, leaving the door open for a number of last year’s junior varsity players to step in and make an impact.
“We had a good JV team, so there’s just a lot of guys that are going to move up and be in a dogfight to play,” Moseley said.
Noah Barron will be a lynchpin for the 2016 edition of the Bucs, as he returns as the starting center fielder. Reid Chandler, who will play third base and in the outfield, was one of Hoover’s best hitters a year ago. Both athletes are slated to go to Central Alabama Community College following their high school careers.
A couple of other players expected to play a big role on this year’s team are Garrett Farquhar and Christopher Vacarella.
“There are a bunch that have a shot,” Moseley said. “If we’re looking at guys that people know about, those are the guys.”
Relatively unknown players will emerge, and that is Moseley’s favorite thing to see.
“Seeing the roles that guys develop and seeing kids grow and face some adversity and learn how to deal with it — that’s the fun part about it,” he said.
Moseley won a state championship and advanced as far as the quarterfinals five times in eight years at Grissom. He now aims to achieve and sustain that success at Hoover.
In order to do that, the Bucs will navigate a region of Thompson, Oak Mountain and Tuscaloosa County.
“Now that you’re in (Class) 7A, the playoffs are on a whole different level,” Moseley said. “The feeling last year was every series was a playoff series.”
Hoover is opening its season now with a tournament in Tampa.
