Seymour High School senior baseball players R.J. Kleber and Devin Hill both enjoy the Victory Field Challenge for the same reason: The competition.

“It’s a lot of competition with our teammates, and we’ve got to look out for each another and just have each other’s backs and help them out when they’re down and they’re not really feeling it,” Kleber said.

“My favorite event is probably dodgeball. The hardest event is probably the day at CrossFit. At the end, we run, but we flip tires, and then we did different weights, and we do a lot of pull-ups and jumping stuff. We do box jumps. It gets pretty rough at the end. They work your whole body. Your whole body is sore the next day.”

[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Click here to purchase photos from this gallery

Hill also looks forward to going up against his teammates each spring.

“I love that we have six, seven teams and a bunch of different grade levels competing against each other. It just brings everyone together as one,” he said. “I like CrossFit because it’s hard, but it’s fun. You get to see who has mental toughness. It brings a lot out of one another. Competing now is going to make us 10 times better than what we were going to be.”

Seymour started its 2019 season Monday with the annual event.

Owls head coach Jeremy Richey said this is the eighth year he has conducted the challenge.

“We added a few new running events,” he said. “On Tuesday, we did the 3,000 relay. It’s an endurance run, but it also creates some strategy because they have to determine how much they are going to run before they tag up the next guy. It makes them think, and then when they get down to the 2,500, 2,700 (yards), they’re tired, and it becomes communication where it’s who is the next person to go because it may not be the same order as before.

“(Swim coach Dave) Boggs always does a great job mixing it up and coming up with new ideas in the pool, and Thursday, we go to CrossFit, and those workouts are different every year.”

Each coach has their own team, and Hill was the captain of his group.

“I try to get everything situated, like who is going to run this and how long or when we’re going to switch,” Hill said. “I’m also that motivator. I’m the motor that never stops encouraging my teammates.”

The athletes lifted weights and did plate holds and towel holds Monday. On Tuesday, they shot half-court shots in the auxiliary gym before going out in the cold, where they did a pitching rubber push in which they pushed a bat the length of the soccer field. After that, they participated in the relay and had team triangles.

Richey said the towel hold is where they wrap a towel around the squat rack and have to hold it.

“It’s an endurance for their hands,” he said. “They’re holding their whole body up. They’re holding onto two parts of a small towel. That’s pretty neat. It’s different this year. We did a plate hold where they hold 25 pounds in each of their hands, and they’ve got to hold that without dropping.”

The relay was an addition to this year’s schedule.

“We do a lot of sprint work, but sometimes, it’s nice to make them run endurance and make them have to come up with a plan, and when the plan changes, they’ve got to go on the fly to make sure they get the running done that they need to,” Richey said.

The coaches changed the pitching rubber push this year, switching from 2-by-4s to pushing bats.

“We had never done the bats before,” Richey said. “The bats didn’t slide as well, and they had to figure out if they held both ends of it, it didn’t match up right, so you would see them making adjustments.”

After school Wednesday, the team was in the swimming pool, Thursday they did the CrossFit workout and Friday they played dodgeball.

“The swimming pool is a really fun thing. We swim laps and do some relays. We have a tube relay, where we get on a tube,” Kleber said. “It brings us really close together, a lot of team bonding and looking out for one another.”

Kleber started at second base last spring and is hoping to fill that position again, while Hill is excited to fill whatever role is needed of him.

“I’m ready to face those big teams and start playing against them,” Hill said. “Last year, I started out at third, then (Richey) transitioned me over to first, and I DH’d (designated hitter) a lot.”

Richey said a lot of other programs do their own challenges.

“A lot of colleges end their fall where they do an Omaha Challenge, which their goal is to get to Omaha (site of the College World Series), just like ours is to get to Victory Field (Indianapolis),” Richey said. “We don’t have all the equipment they have, but it keeps bringing about new ideas for us. It allows us to make it better. If you’re a senior and you’re going through it for the fourth time, we want it to feel different.”

One of the main reasons the Owls do the challenge is to build chemistry.

“We’re creating team bonding through adverse situations,” Richey said. “We try to put them through as much adversity as we can because we know we’re going to face some. When we got done (Tuesday in the cold), I told them there is no reason for us to ever take a field and not give our all or be intimated by anybody because what we did in those conditions is so much more physically and mentally exhausting than anything we’re going to see on a baseball field.”

Richey said 42 players competed this week. Some players had injuries and were unable to compete, and some were sidelined with sickness.

The Owls will open their season March 26 at Trinity Lutheran.