Staff file photo / Brian Yauger Bristol’s Brent Songer celebrates after scoring a run against Jackson-Milton in the district championship last season.

The Bristol Panthers are on a mission this season.

After last year’s district championship, the program’s first-ever, the Panthers want to prove that last year wasn’t just a flash in the pan.

With six returning starters and plenty of experienced youth, Bristol is set to make another push for a district title.

“‘I’m not saying we have a chip on our shoulder, t but we’re out to prove that what we did last year was not a one-hit wonder. I mean, the regular season we had, we improved as the year went on,” Panthers coach Jeff Thompson said. “We had a good tournament run, but we’re working hard to prove that it was legit.”

Things are going to look different this year though as the Panthers will be approaching things differently this season on the mound.

“Are we a different team because we lost our top two pitchers in (Nick) Church and (Haydn) Mahan, the answer is yes, but we changed our team a little bit,” Thompson said. “We’re going to be more contact pitchers. But the idea is we still have six kids that got valuable experience last year, so even though we’re going to be young – we don’t have a senior on the team this year. We’re still sophomore dominated – we are bringing back some experience.”

Starting on the mound this season as the Panthers’ No. 1 will be Kaiden Kohler with Diesel Williams in the two slot.

Like Thompson said, the approach on the mound is going to change this season. The team as a whole has been focused on making plays in the field more than power pitching.

“We’re not going to be striking out a lot of people,” Thompson said. “We’re going to be pitching for contact and hopefully make some plays.

“We’ve really focused on the fundamentals this preseason. A lot of footwork drills defensively, a lot of cut off drills, really focused on the fundamentals of just playing defense and footwork because we know we’re going to have to make some plays in the field this year.”

Some other returners to watch out for this season are Brent Songer, Jack Berry, Jayden Miller and Croc Thorp. Each will have prominent roles somewhere on the field. The team has a versatile lineup that can slot anywhere in the field where needed.

“These are all kids that lettered last year and can play multiple positions,” Thompson said. “We do have some kids that logged some innings on the hill.”

Along with the returning starters, the Panthers welcome back junior Mikey Burbach who returns to the roster after not playing last season. He started his freshman year and will be at first base this year.

The Panthers have some quality teams on the schedule including Newton Falls, Harding, Hubbard and doubleheaders with Garfield and Heartland Christian. The league will be fierce as always with Pymatuning Valley, Mathews and Ashtabula St. John on the slate as well.

If the weather cooperates, the Panthers will open their season up with a home contest against Lordstown today. Bristol started last season 3-7 and finished 14-14 with a district title.

While the Panthers hope for a better start, the main goal is improvement like last year’s squad.

“One of my main goals is to compete every day. We compete every day in practice, we compete every day when we’re playing a game, and that we’re better at the end of the year than we are at the beginning of the year,” Thompson said. That and that was proven last year. Let’s put it this way, there were very few people that thought that we would win the district last year and get the results we did, but the kids improved as the year went on. The whole idea was to be playing good baseball at the right time and that’s one of our goals this year.”

byauger@tribtoday.com