BROOKINGS — The Brookings Cubs will begin their amateur baseball season on Wednesday night when they welcome the Lake Norden Lakers to Brookings at 7:30 p.m.

The Cubs went 19-8 last season and made it to the State Tournament. It will be a bit of a new look for Brookings as long time members JaColby Anderson, Austin Koenig and Jeff Fish moved on from the Cubs. Anderson and Koenig went to go play for a Flandreau amateur team and Fish retired.

In total the Cubs will have five new players and all of them are in college. Brookings general manager Aaron Jorenby said getting new blood on the team will be a good thing but it may take a little bit for the guys to adjust.

“Having younger players should be a good thing, but it also means that we have a lot of guys that haven’t experienced amateur baseball before. It could be a slow start for some of those guys. Going from facing college pitching to the occasional really slow pitcher in amateur ball, it will be an adjustment. But they’re baseball players that are playing in college and eventually they’ll adjust,” Jorenby said.

Three of the new players play for the University of Sioux Falls in Zach Shastay, Noah Buss and Jake Brandner. Shastay just finished his junior season with USF. He pitched 15 innings and had a record of 3-2 with an ERA of 6.60. He had 14 strikeouts and 13 walks. Buss just finished his fifth year of playing catcher for the Cougars. This season he started 13 games and hit .158 and had one home run. Brandner saw his first action at USF this season as this was his redshirt freshman year. He pitched five and two thirds innings and gave up seven earned runs with two strikeouts and three walks.

The other new players are from Brookings in Parker Winghart and Justin Cofell. Winghart just played his freshman year at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, Minnesota. He hit .389 and started 33 of the 34 games for the Knights. He had 19 doubles, which was a freshman record for MLC. Cofell started most games for the Brookings Bandits over the past two seasons.

The top returners include Henry Hammrich, Chase McDaniel, Rhett Zelinsky, Tyler Kruetner, Jake Ammann, Jackson Krogman and Noel Burgos. Hammrich hit .257 last season and had eight home runs. McDaniel hit .436 and had 10 doubles. Zelinsky hit .472 and had 32 RBIs and Kruetner hit .324.

Ammann pitched for USF this year as well. He turned into the Cougars ace after injuries and pitched 54 and one third innings. He started 11 games and went 2-3 with an ERA of 4.80. He had 28 strikeouts and 38 walks. Ammann had 43 strikeouts for the Cubs last season.

Krogman started seven games for the Cubs last year. He had an ERA of 4.40 and led the Cubs in strikeouts with 45. Burgos hit .408 last season and had nine doubles. He led the team in stolen bases with 14.

The Cubs will play in one tournament this year as they will travel to Pipestone, Minnesota June 7-9. Brookings will be hosting the first weekend of the State Tournament Aug. 9-11. The second weekend will be played in Mitchell Aug. 16-18.

“Our schedule is fairly similar to past years,” Jorenby said. “… We go to the state champions to kick off league play, so that will be fun. We weren’t going to participate in a tournament this year because of how young we were going to be and you don’t know how young amateur guys are going to travel, but we decided that were going to do a tournament in Pipeston and that will be neat to see some teams that we haven’t ever seen before.

“Tea is coming up here and that will be the first time we will ever play them. Districts are Aug. 1-4, but we don’t have to participate if we don’t want to because we are hosting the first weekend of the State Tournament Aug. 9-11. But we are thinking about playing because our last regular season game is July 26 and we’d have two weeks off.”

The Cubs are always in contention for a state championship and this year is no different. Jorenby said he’s excited to see what the new players can bring.

“I would expect that we’re going to be one of the best teams in the state again. Leadership is going to be hard to replace because it’s guys that have years and years of amateur baseball knowledge, but I’m hoping what we lost in leadership we will replace with talent. I have to imagine that we’re going to be one of the more talented teams in the state because of the college talent we have,” Jorenby said.