The weather continues to not cooperate with the baseball season. Charleston has played just one game since their Apollo Conference split with Mattoon last weekend.

Here is a preview of Saturday’s game. 

Team Records: Charleston (3-1, 1-1) @ Lincoln (2-5, 0-2)

Where: Lincoln High School

School Size: Charleston (796), Lincoln (810)

Varsity Tip-Off: 11:00 a.m.

Opponent’s History: Head coach August Casson is in the middle of his fourth season. He owns an overall record of 40-30 at the varsity level. In his first season, Lincoln won a Regional Championship with a 21-15 record. After COVID whipped out the 2020 season, the Railsplitters finished last year 17-10. With 964 wins for the school, the team is slowly approaching 1,000 career wins for the program. 

Lincoln’s Past Results: After starting the season off with a 10-0 win over Warrensburg-Latham, the team has lost five of their last six games. That includes three straight losses to Springfield Sacred Heart-Griffin, Monticello, and Downs Tri-Valley. After defeating Peoria Notre Dame 8-2, the team dropped two straight games to Mahomet-Seymour, including 12-2 and 7-1 losses. 

Lincoln’s Top Players: Lincoln lost First-Team All-Apollo infielder Dylan Singleton to graduation, but returns senior and All-Apollo Second Team member Keagan Ferguson. 

Lincoln’s Team Stats:  No stats are available. 

Charleston’s Past Results: Charleston’s Tuesday game with Neoga was called off due to the weather. On Wednesday, Charleston defeated Champaign Centennial 8-1. This comes off of a split with Mattoon last weekend, where Charleston was forced to shake off some rust after not playing in two weeks. 

“The first game against Mattoon the boys came out with a purpose,” said Charleston coach Daniel Bennett. “We hadn’t played in over 2 weeks so they were ready to go and fired up for a rivalry game.  In the second game, I think we took our foot off the gas offensively.  We needed to put the ball in play and force them to make plays and we gave them too many easy outs.  Overall though tough weather conditions, I thought we battled hard.”

Charleston’s Team Stats: Collin Patterson leads the team with a .556 batting average and five runs batted in. James Hess and William Applegate each own a home run. Kendall Pankey and Applegate each own three runs batted in. Josh Sipes owns a 1.50 earned run average in 4.2 innings pitched, while Applegate owns a 0.00 earned run average in 3.1 innings pitched. Sipes leads the team with eight strikeouts. 

What Lincoln Said: Coach Casson did not respond to comment. 

What Charleston Said: “I don’t have much information on Lincoln, just that they have had some tough opponents these first couple of weeks.” said Bennett. “Once we get closer to Saturday the team and I will discuss what they remember from last year. To beat Lincoln we are going to need to keep playing well defensively.  We have 1 error through 3 games and that is a stat that I am excited about.  Our pitchers need to keep throwing strikes and let our defense work.  We work a lot on hitting during practice, we just need some warm weather to help warm our bats up.”