Things will look quite different for the Warrenton baseball team as it starts the 2026 season.

Even though the Warriors return juniors Carter Martin, Jake Kirkpatrick and Ric Standley amongst the four returning pitchers and position players, the program will be missing something on which it has relied, even through last year’s 21-7 campaign.

Over the past several seasons, the program has had a litany of four-year players move through their entire high school careers at the varsity level, Coach Eric Burle said.

While the team has gone more than 30 games over the .500 mark in the last four years, this season won’t feature any of those four-year seniors.

“The last four or five seasons, we’ve put together some nice seasons,” Burle said. “But over the course of those seasons, we’ve lost some four-year starters. Last year and the year before, I think we graduated five or six four-year guys. Certainly, over the last two to three years, we’ve gained a lot of experience.”

For his part, Martin (7-1 record,1.45 earned run average in 48 ⅓ innings) said that the junior core will have to step up to mentor the inexperienced portion of the roster.

“Leadership is going to be a big thing this year,” said Martin, a University of Missouri commit. “We don’t have many upperclassmen, so we’re going to have to work hard to get everybody on the same page. We’re just going to go out and do our thing. We all know we have the guys to be successful with the depth that our pitching has this year.”

In addition to Martin (who also hit .304 with 22 RBI), Kirkpatrick (5-1 record, 1.82 ERA in 42.3 innings) and Standley (1-1 record, 1.00 ERA), Burle said that sophomore utility Keegan Lehmkuhl (.271 average, 11 RBI) will also provide a measure of returning experience.

The coach said that he knows that, while the season will be a work in progress, some things – like striving to win conference and be playing collectively as the team’s best when the postseason begins, should always be goals.

“Our mentality is that, with a lot of youth and inexperience, a lot of the holes we have should be filled by the end of the season,” Burle said. “I do foresee a lot of freshmen and I do foresee a lot of guys who have never played varsity baseball out on the field, so you’d like to think by the end of the season, we’d start coming together. I think that’s coupled with some guys that had some good performances on the mound, though. High school baseball, really at any level, starts with pitching. I think that’s going to be huge for us.”

Warrenton opens its season at 7 p.m. tonight (March 19) against Kirkwood at Carshield Field.

 Kirkpatrick said that, while pitching will be at the forefront, it will take the entire team for Warrenton to find success.

“I know we’re going to have to rely on the pitching, but the whole team is going to have to come together,” Kirkpatrick said. “I think our young guys will do a fine job and will fill the roles that we need them to fill. I just think that we (the juniors) will have to step up early and lead the way.”