The coming of age has been a process for the Pojoaque Valley High School baseball team, but coach David Soveranez believes the maturation process is just about ready to show results.
“The vast majority of our players are juniors and are three-year starters,” he said. “We feel they are ready to bloom this year and next year.”
The Elks are coming off a 5-21 season, but all five of those wins came during district play, indicative of the team’s reliance on multi-sport players who miss much of the early season work needed to fine tune a baseball player for the season.
“It’s difficult in Pojoaque because we’ve got so many multi-sport athletes,” Soveranez said. “Baseball is a finesse sport, so it takes them a while to get going. Our non-district schedule is tough but they usually start to gel around mid-season, district time.”
The Elks already have a blueprint, as they made the playoffs in 2023 by splitting their early games and rolling strong through the District 2-4A schedule.
“Our expectations are to focus on our district play and try to win our district,” the coach said. “And then try to make the state playoffs as we did two years ago. The long-term goals are for this group of 10 juniors who are three-year starters and hopefully to see them bloom and blossom over the next couple of weeks and months. Hopefully, we’re hitting our stride.”
Pitcher/shortstop Zeke Atencio and infielder/pitcher Noah Torres have, so far, been pushing the offense, hitting .571 and .375 respectively and between them, they’ve scored a third of Pojoaque’s runs and have 20 steals.
But the Elks success really starts on the mound and with the leather, Soveranez said.
“Defense and pitching seem to be our strengths,” he said. “Hitting has been a challenge and scoring runs has been a challenge. I think we hang our hats on our pitching and defense.”
Atencio is the team’s ace, with Torres, Raudel Rivera, Marcos Romero and freshman Xavior Salazar all jockeying for innings.
Atencio, who also plays basketball, said his main focus is the diamond, and he even works out with baseball training throughout the hoops season.
“It’s not that difficult because I’m playing with my travel team most of the year round,” he said. “I have a throwing program and I do all my long toss. So when I come back to the field, it’s not too difficult.”
Atencio has designs on playing baseball in college so that is where his focus lies.
“I want to play at the next level,” he said. “I had two older brothers and baseball was the sport they loved playing. I used to like basketball more but once I got to middle school, I don’t know what it was, but I fell in love with baseball.”
Pitching is Atencio’s primary position and he sports a deep arsenal that includes a two-seam fastball with movement, slider, knuckle curve and change up.
“A lot of people think it’s better to go deep in the count with a really young team, but I’m not pitching for strikeouts,” he said. “My priority is getting easy flies or grounders and I trust my team can make the plays.”
But, Atencio agreed with his coach that the team is just starting to find itself.
“Our team is really young so my main expectation is that we all work on our own things to better ourselves and when we’re seniors, we’re ready to compete with everybody around the state,” he said.
And that camaraderie that has built up over the years will help the team both this season and next.
“A lot of teams can have a lot of great players, but if you’re not close and playing with your family, your brothers, you’re not going to perform as well,” Atencio said. “With us, if somebody does bad, you can cheer him up. You trust them and have faith in them and that brings them back up.”
So now it comes time to lay it all out there on the field, Soveranez said.
“I think this year, obviously we try to make a run, but next year we’re going to put all our eggs in the basket,” he said. “It’s been a four-year process and they’ll be the older and bigger kids on the block. We’re looking to make a move this year and obviously next year when everyone is a senior.”