Orange Beach, Ala. – (OBA) – Finding leaders on your athletic team is a must for a successful season. Orange Beach Baseball Coach Josh Hoyle says he believes those leaders have helped his Makos to the state playoffs and a first-round three-game series. State baseball playoffs in Class 1A-6A begin April 24-25 in the round of 32.

Orange Beach will entertain Jackson in a three-game series, with a doubleheader on April 24, with games at 5 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., and a third game on April 25 if neither team sweeps the first two games. The winner will advance to the next round to face the Bibb County-Tallassee winner. Get tickets here.

Orange Beach won a home series for the first round after winning a series and the area championship against Bayside Academy the weekend of April 17, winning the first game 7-5, dropping the second game 11-8, and the series final 13-3.

Hoyle, in his 15th season as a head baseball coach and third in Orange Beach, said he’ll be looking to team leaders to help the Makos move to the round of 16.

“I kind of read off to them what a captain is, how a captain acts, how our captains carry themselves, and what they are going to be tasked with,” Hoyle said. “I never understood when I played after the season, the coach would say, ‘the captains are so-and-so and so-and-so.’ I didn’t know I was a captain. We do our captains early so they can actually help lead.”

What resulted were players from three different grade levels, senior pitcher Matthew Hoover, senior outfield Brayden Hood, junior catcher Colton Boyd and sophomore shortstop Jacob Thomas.

“We have four captains voted on by the kids,” Hoyle said. “Not necessarily by design. We had a lot of guys get votes but those four kind of ran away with it. Four great kids who show up and do everything we ask ‘em to do.”

When Hoyle looked at the group his players selected, he had to suppress a smile.

“I probably would’ve picked the same four guys, honestly,” he said. “It’s good when the kids are kind of thinking the same way you’re thinking.”

And, he says that has carried over into the work ethic he says his players approach the game with.

“They’re a great group of kids,” Hoyle said. “They love to practice. They are a fun group to coach. I think it’s rare to get kids nowadays that want to be coached. There’s a lot of information out there at their fingertips and some of them think they know everything. But these guys, they run in here every day ready to go, eager to learn. They want to be coached. They want to be pushed.