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: Depew Hornets

Classification: A-1

2025 Spring Results: 15-11

Head Coach: Evan Schinnerer

Head coaching experience: 7 (6 at Depew)

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Top Returners

• Carson Kinney (SR) – uncommitted so far. He’s started for us all 4 years. He’s our #1 on the mound, leadoff, & can play anywhere we need him to in the INF. Team leader and one of our hardest working kids.
• Mateo Wren (JR) – 2 hole, can play him anywhere on the field, & will be looking at picking up some innings on the mound this year.
• Kyler Fenton (SO) – He has a chance to take over our starting C spot & get some innings on the mound this year as well. Can also play a little 3B if we need it
• Braxdyn Swart (SO) – played 3rd for us last year, but will be moving out the OF this year. He was our #3 last year on the mound

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Top Newcomers

• Levi McDermott (SO) – had a knee injury that sidelined him all of last year. He was going to be one of our main middle infielders & top arm out of the bullpen. He knows the game really well & is going to really help us out this season. Very hard worker. Has the chance to be one of our team leaders

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Overall Team Strengths

Having an older team. We’re very junior heavy this year. Many of them got a lot of varsity experience last year (a lot of them for the first time). We’re hoping last year’s “learning year” pays dividends this season.

Overall Team Needs to Work On

Pitching depth. We’ve got the arms, we just have a lot that has had very limited varsity experience or that we need to take the next step/fill a new role.

Outlook

If our pitching can click for us, I think we have a shot to surprise some people. We were pretty young (in age & varsity experience) last year, so we’re expecting to grow off that & be able to take the next step as a program this season. We’ll be a JR heavy team, but we will also have a few underclassmen that we will be expecting to fill some spots that were left by last year’s SR group. Biggest thing for us is we want to slowly build throughout the year and be playing our best ball at the end of the year.

Schedule

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