For the Butte Roadrunners baseball team, it's never too early to start preparing for the upcoming season.

Even though it's January, Spring is in the air. Sunshine is bearing down on Cowan Field at Butte College. Baseball is back.

"The kids are really excited, they've been grinding it out for two weeks and we're excited to be out here," said coach Anthony Ferro.

"Coach pushes us to our limits, we're out here every day working hard and pushing us to our ability," added Seth Davis.

This year the buzz around the Roadrunners squad is a little bigger than in year's past.
That's because coach Ferro's team took things to a new level in 2011, finishing with a 29-10 overall and advancing to the playoffs for the third time in Ferro's eight years on the job. But Ferro says duplicating those results will be tough because the Runners lost seven All-Conference players, all of whom graduated and moved on to four-year universities.

"We're coming off a great year, unfortunately we lost our entire starting lineup so we're going to be mostly freshman this year, but the kids are responding well. They're buying into the program and they're excited about it. The kids want to build off of last year and keep the momentum going," added Ferro.

"Everyone is talking about how we're a young team, we have great infielders who are freshman, we're really deep in the bullpen this year, more so than last year, so we're pretty excited about it," said Scott Avery.

"We have about 27, 28 guys and how big of a piece of the puzzle are they going to be? This is what we're out here for right now. Come game time we'll put them out there and we'll see who can handle it mentally and who can handle it physically, but everybody will have an opportunity in our program," said Ferro.

The runners kick off the season in two weeks. Their first game is at home against Mendocino College on February 3rd.