The calendar has turned to the a new year and that means the OSSAA high school baseball season will be here soon. Classes A1, A2, and B officially get started February 23 while the rest of the classes begin March 2.

Up until that the beginning of the season, SSBR will be providing previews of as many teams as we can. Recently, SSBR sent out questionnaires to the high school coaches across the state of Oklahoma asking for their top returning players, top newcomers, overall strengths/weaknesses, and their overall assessment where their respective programs are coming into the 2026 season.

What you have below are the responses to those questions in the words of the coaches themselves.

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Today’s team: Alva Goldbugs

Classification: 3A

2025 Spring Results: 16-17

Head Coach: Derrick Thomas

Head coaching experience: 1st year overall

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Top Returners

• Keiden Kimberly is a junior and will anchor the middle infield at SS, be the leadoff and will also pitch some.
• Coleman Gaisford is also a junior and will play CF and pitch.
• Gunnar Tackett is also a junior and I will rely on him as a pitcher and 3rd basemen.
• Not seeing these guys last year has hindered my knowledge of their experience, but I want to say each of them hit over 300 last season. There is some small college interest in all three of these guys.
• Brynden Hunt is a sophomore who has gotten stronger in the weight room this year and will look to eat up innings on the mound.
• His older brother Braydyn is a senior, and he will also look to eat up innings, and will be a utility player in the field.
• Connor and Keaton Adair are also juniors, and they will be utility players as well.

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Top Newcomers

• Cord Heaton is a freshman and will play catcher when our starting catcher is playing elsewhere. Cord will catch quite a few of our non-district games. Cord is one of the hardest working players in our school, so I am excited to see where he ends up.

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Overall Team Strengths

Our main strength is going to be our defense. We have a lot of speed and hopefully our outfield can track down a lot of fly balls that most teams might not be able to.

Overall Team Needs to Work On

Offense. Just looking at scores from last season, they did not score a lot. They beat who they should have but struggled against the schools who were at the same competitive level as they were or higher. One of my goals for the team this year will be to be aggressive on offense and put pressure on the defense a lot of the time.

Outlook

There is a lot of experience on this roster. I have 4 seniors this year. We are a heavy junior led team, with some good talent coming up in the next few years. We have the guys to make a run in the post season, but this team has not won a lot in the past. I am optimistic that they can have a better season than they did last year.

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Schedule

3/2/2026 Perry
3/3/2026 @ Perry
3/6/2026 @ Pioneer
3/9/2026 Crossing Christian
3/10/2026 @ Crossings
3/12/2026 Woodward
3/19-21 Tonkawa Tournament
3/23/2026 Jones
3/24/2026 @ Jones
3/30/2026 @ Blackwell
3/31/2026 – Blackwell
4/2/2026 @ OBA
4/6/2026 @ Hennessey
4/7/2026 Hennessey
4/9/2026 @ Mooreland
4/13/2026 Chisholm
4/16-18 Merrifield Tournament (Enid)
4/24/2026 @ Fairview
4/30-5/2 Regional Tournament
5/7-5/9 Super Regional Tournament
5/14-5/16 State Tournament

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