This season, White becomes a first-year head coach and will lead “a pretty young team” into what has been a monster of a region in District 10.

Last year’s region champ, Cathedral Prep, finished 19-4 and has won nine consecutive District 10 championships.

“Our region is definitely a gauntlet,” said White, assisted by Ed Baldensperger, Shawn Wilson and a plethora of volunteer coaches. “Prep is obviously the favorite, but any team can win on any day in our region. It’s going to come down to who wants it more on that day and who can take care of business in the ‘freebie’ war — walks, errors, mental errors. Our expectations for the season sort of follow these aspects of the game. You can set goals as far as your success for the season, but in baseball, you can only control what you can control. If We Play Harder (notice the mantra?) and we take care of the little things, we can put ourselves in the best position to win a lot of baseball games. Nothin’ but blue-collar baseball.”

Warren has a 22-man roster from a team that finished 6-11 overall last season.

New Dragons head coach Johnny White. Times Observer photo by Mark Evans

“We have three seniors in Felix Valencia, Jacob Franklin and Carter Cochran,” said White. “All three have seen time in varsity and I expect them to make bigger impacts this year.

“We have several returning starters in the junior class with Eli Snyder, Tage Wyman, Colin Zdarko and Brady Shene. Kyle Dippold and Zane Carlson are also juniors this year who haven’t seen a lot of varsity playing time, but could make an impact this year in the varsity lineup.

“We have a couple sophomores with time in the varsity lineup that I can put anywhere in Bradey Chase and Charlie Blum,” he said. “We have a few other sophomores who haven’t seen any varsity time yet, but are on the right track to get there in Phil Nickerson, Zach Peters and Nate Klenowski.”

White added: “All three of them have improved immensely in between their freshman and sophomore years and I’m really impressed with their attention to detail.

“We have several incoming freshmen that will be working towards getting their shot in the varsity lineup,” added White, “with a few of them ready to prove themselves once the season gets started: Broc Bryan, Heath Genis, Gabe Thibodeux, Aaron Shene, Isaac Neal, Rob Malczyk and Josh McLean.

“We’re a pretty young team, but our three seniors have already stepped up as leaders and have shown they can keep the younger guys on task,” said White. “Our group is going to surprise a lot of people and as long as We Play Harder between the lines and take care of the little things, we’re going to surprise a lot of people.”

The schedule is always weather-dependent, but Warren opens Friday at Titusville with the first home game scheduled at Old Legion Field on Monday, March 31, against Meadville — the only other 5A team in D10. Other Region 6 teams include McDowell and Erie High (6A), and Prep, Fort LeBoeuf, General McLane and Harbor Creek (4A).