The Helper Merchants will open up the 2020 American Legion baseball season Wednesday night at Ernie Gardner Field in Helper.
Fielding two teams in the upcoming American Legion season, the 19U team will play in the only game this week, before the 17U squad opens the season on Monday, June 8 on the road against Salem Hills.
“The first goal was to have two teams. One older and one younger,” said manager Dakota Cisneros. “We ended up with 32 guys so they’ll be split up throughout the summer. The numbers were great and I’m excited to see where our season will take us.”
Helper will share a region with Salem Hills, Springville, Wasatch, Maple Mountain and Provo. Playing each team twice, the region slate will feature 10 division games for each squad. The regular season will run throughout the month of June, before the top performing teams advance to the State Tournament in July.
Also returning to this year’s schedule is a four-day Helper Tournament that will not count towards divisional standings. This year’s tournament will run from June 10 through June 13. Union, Skyline, Tooele, Hurricane, Richfield, Alta and Salem Hills will all participate, adding to the quality of opponents set to face Helper this season.
“In region we’ll play all bigger schools if we are talking about classification size in comparison to Carbon,” said Cisneros. “They are all 4A or 5A schools. In my eyes, that is how I want it to be. We want to play teams that will challenge us and help us grow from situations.”
Loaded with youth, this year’s team will feature only three senior-plus players. Braxton Bennett and Nathan Richens, fall under the umbrella to return to the 19U team to prepare for baseball at the next level. Tyler Wright is the lone senior off of a Carbon team that featured just two in 2020.
“I do have some younger guys, such as freshman and eighth graders, that I will eventually pull up.” said Cisneros. “It’s definitely a team with some experience that looks young. I am confident we won’t have a problem putting young guys in spots to help us win.”
Below is the complete regular season schedule for the Merchants 2020 season:
Helper-Legion-Schedule