Spring-season schedule notes for high school players

These notes contain important information concerning our Spring 2024 high school baseball schedule. Please study them carefully and mark your calendars accordingly.

General

We will field varsity and subvarsity teams. Each will play a challenging schedule in one of the most competitive, high-school-baseball markets anywhere. Even though we are all homeschooled student-athletes, the Kings are a high school baseball team—your high school baseball team—and require a level of commitment to excellence that would be expected of student-athletes at the best high schools in the state. That commitment to excellence encompasses your academic work as well as your play on the field.

Particularly though your academic work, honor your parents and the respect the opportunity they have given you to be a homeschooled student athlete.

Season begins

Our spring season opens with practice on Monday, January 15, 2024.

Season ends

Barring unexpected events or circumstances outside of our control, the spring season will end on Friday, May 31, 2024. Prior to season commencement, we will not schedule an event after Saturday, May 18, 2023 and hope to conclude the season by that date, but weather or other factors could possibly cause a delay in our final game(s).

No spring break

Our season runs continuously from beginning to end. In keeping with Texas high school baseball tradition, we do not take a spring break and will practice and play games during spring break.

Practice schedule

Except when we have games, we practice every weekday from 2:30 PM to 5:30 PM. We do not practice on Good Friday, March 29, 2024.

No overnight travel expected

We do not anticipate scheduling games or other events that would require overnight stays away from home. Should factors outside of our control cause us to re-consider that position, we will let you know as far in advance as possible.

School day planning

Many of our games, whether at home or away, will commence at 3:30 PM on school days, with pre-game warm-ups commencing at 2:15 PM. We expect to participate in four varsity tournaments that would have us playing games during the school day on Thursday or Friday, potentially as early as 8:00 AM, with pre-game warm-ups commencing at 7:00 AM. On rare occasions varsity or subvarsity games will commence at 1:00 PM on school days, with pre-game warm-ups commencing at 11:45 AM.

If you participate in a dual-credit program, co-op, or other arrangement with outside-the-home instruction, please keep your teacher(s) regularly informed of your sports schedule, as far in advance as possible, so that they provide your homework assignments, lecture notes, or examinations in advance or otherwise make arrangements with you to fulfill your academic obligations in a timely manner.

Weekly time commitment

All of our high school players must be prepared to practice or play six days per week, Mondays through Saturdays, from the beginning of the season until the end, and in rare circumstances on extremely short notice, e.g., the morning of a re-scheduled game. Weather tends to play havoc with Texas high school baseball schedules and we must be flexible in order to meet our schedule. We will never practice, play games, or hold other team events on a Sunday. We strive to minimize Saturday events, but will occasionally have games on Saturdays. We also strive to limit baseball events to five per week, but we will likely have a several weeks during the season with events on six days.

Schedule conflicts

Please notify Coach Wilkins right away of any events or other activities on your Spring 2024 calendar that conflict with the schedule above. He will expect players participating in winter sports, e.g., basketball, to fulfill their commitments to their winter teams ahead of their baseball commitments, but please inform him now of any such obligations so that he can plan accordingly.

For conflicts outside of winter sports and other than illness or injury, our program applies a functional standard for the assessment of requests to be excused from baseball activities. The term “functional standard” means we evaluate whether we could function as a competitive high school team were everyone to be excused for the same reason on the same day. We generally will not excuse players from team events that would be disruptive to the team using that standard. All such determinations are made by Coach Wilkins in his sole discretion as head of baseball operations.

Game schedule

We will notify you as soon as our varsity and subvarsity game schedules are finalized and published, as well as of any changes. As noted above, even after our initial schedule is released, it will almost certainly change on account of weather or to accommodate opponents. We sometimes add new games during the season when high schools in our area have cancellations and offer us a competitive opportunity. We maintain the “gold copy” or reference version of our schedule on MaxPreps.

Questions

Please direct any questions concerning our high school schedule to Coach Wilkins.