East Bladen baseball managing high roster turnover

ELIZABETHTOWN, N.C. (WWAY) – East Bladen baseball had a wealth of upperclassmen take the field recently, but that’s not the case in 2025.

The Eagles have seven new starters and only ten total players are on the team this season. A massive change from the ten seniors they trotted onto the field each of the last two years.

Also new Head Coach James Daly, who is in his first year at the helm. His players are getting lots of playing time, which is nothing new as they’ve been playing together for over a decade.

“The game doesn’t change much, it just speeds up the higher level you go,” Daly said. “From middle school, it doesn’t change, it just speeds up to JV and then speeds up again for varsity. It’s just reiterating all the fundamentals and stuff they learned when they were younger.”

East Bladen only has two seniors, both of which are new to the everyday lineup. After having to wait his turn, Andrew Musselwhite is happy to finally step up to the plate both literally and figuratively.

“It’s a good feeling,” Musselwhite said. “Feel like I’ve worked hard to be able to be able to get to this point, so I just got to be able to capitalize and take advantage of it whenever I can. It’s a different feeling, but it’s still a good feeling. Knowing that we got a bunch of younger guys coming up for the future.”

That future will come with some growing pains. Daly says they will need to experience that firsthand.

“Some of them are having to learn a little bit more of having to deal with failure,” Daly said. “Since baseball is a game of failure, a lot of them haven’t had to deal with it at the younger ages. Now they’re starting to deal with it a little bit more.”

Being the only other senior on the team, Aiden Hargrove has stepped up to be a team leader in his final year. He hopes the Eagles will soar in the second half of the season.

“This year’s team, we’re really young, but we’ve played with each other since we were four years old,” Hargrove said. “It’s just a really tight nit group. Almost like a family. We have a chemistry. We know each other’s weaknesses, strengths. We know how to pick each other up whenever someone’s doing bad or good.”