Over the past two seasons Nikola French has been a key member of the batting order, holding down a spot since his sophomore season and thriving even when the rest of the offense isn’t there. He has been top three in both batting average and RBI’s over the past two seasons and he has kept it going this season through six games amidst a struggling Westside offense.
Through the first six games of the season the Warriors are off to a slow 1-5 start under interim coach Kevin Koch. Five of the six games have been decided by one run, including a couple of tough extra inning losses that the Warriors let slip away. It has been the offense that has struggled, scoring just under three runs a game. The most they have scored in a game this season was seven in their last game against Elkhorn South. French has still been the best part of the line-up starting the year with a .333 average through 15 at bats and only three strikeouts in the early part of his senior season.
“I Just keep doing what I’m doing,” French said “Stay confident, Don’t worry about anything too much. It’s a baseball game.”
Last year French had a very productive year hitting .310 along with 12 rbi’s which was second on the team while also pitching a couple of times. He threw two innings during a 16-15 season where the Warriors lost in the A1 district finals to Lincoln East. This year, Westside is led by 11 seniors including French, who is one of if not the most experienced players on the team having over 180 plate appearances and 52 games played, both the most on the team. French has embraced the role of the veteran and the leader on a team who has a lot of them. He has made a habit of looking out for the younger kids.
“It’s kind of just like you kind of look out for the younger kids,” French said “All you really do is make sure they’re going on the right path, helping out when needed. You don’t gotta push them around like you’re some big bully.”
French is not stopping at Westside. In November he signed to play division one baseball at South Dakota State University. The Jackrabbits have some MLB talent with Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Blake Treinen the big alumni out of Brookings, along with Chicago Cubs pitcher Caleb Thielbar and Adam Mazur who is in triple A. French is the only Warrior who signed to play at the Divison one level and is excited to play at the next level next year.
“They had a very similar thing to Westside,” French said “They have very good team chemistry and are pretty good with like, it wasn’t just like their baseball program, obviously, it’s academics and they had engineering programs. So those are some degrees of influence too.”
Though Westside has had a rough start to the season at 1-5 they still have lots of time to get back on track and have a good season under coach Koch. French and the rest of the team have time to improve on the season so that they can get back in the driver’s seat and get back to the state tournament for the first time since 2022 and make it to Werner park.
“The big thing that we need to really do is just focus more on our hitting,” French said. “Our defense has been doing fine. Our pitching has been doing fine. The only thing we need to do is just make sure offense is actually being put out there.”
Westside is back in action on Thursday, April 3rd against Columbus.
