The Daily Chronicle high school baseball preview will appear in the March 12 paper, with previews of local teams. Until then here are five storylines to watch during the 2022 season.

Young and experienced teams look to make noise

Hinckley-Big Rock and Sycamore are going to be young this season, but both the Royals and Spartans return a lot of starters.

The Spartans (19-10) have 11 returners from last season – and six of them are still only juniors. The team returns 15 of its 19 pitching wins. Ace Ethan Storm is back. The team went through some growing pains, but was in the Interstate 8 race until the final game and reached a regional final.

The Royals (7-16) are in a little different situation, under a rebuild. But with four seniors and a fourth-year head coach in Matt Olsen, they are poised to turn the corner. In Olsen’s first season, they won one game, the second of back-to-back one-win seasons. Olsen said there’s a group of talented sophomores he’s planning on sprinkling in around seniors Richard Hintzsche, Elliot McGuire, Ben Jourdan and Judson Scott that have no pressure.

How will the Interstate 8 pan out?

Kaneland (11-3 in conference) won the conference, but five teams were within three games of the Knights. Kaneland did lose its ace and Daily Chronicle Baseball Player of the Year Tyler Conklin, but the Knights have reloaded behind junior standouts Alex Panico and Johnny Spallasso.

As mentioned, Sycamore (9-4-1) – which finished second to the Knights last season – returns most of its team and are hungry. Morris (9-5), LaSalle-Peru (9-5) and Ottawa (8-5-1) were all in the mix last season as well.

DeKalb looking for stability

There’s nothing as emblematic of the Barbs’ recent fortunes than the fact that they haven’t had a winning season since 2015 but won the Class 4A Hampshire Regional despite a 10-26 record in 2017.

Now on their fourth coach since 2015 in Josh Latimer, the Barbs will start again with a few returners and a lot of young players. And Latimer knows them well, having been the pitching coach the past three seasons.

It’s not easy playing in a loaded DuPage Valley Conference against significantly larger schools, but Latimer said he’s optimistic that the team will make strides this year.

Is anyone going on a postseason run this year?

The last time an area team made the sectional round was in 2019. Granted, there’s the giant asterisk with the 2020 season wiped out by the pandemic, not to mention the abbreviated schedule played last year.

Still, Kaneland and Sycamore both seemed poised for regional wins, but both lost finals last season. Both teams earned sectional berths in 2019, and both lost their sectional semifinals.

As DeKalb proved in 2017, it just takes getting hot at the right time to lift a regional plaque.

Who’s on deck?

As mentioned, Conklin, the reigning POY who threw no-hitters in back-to-back games last season, has graduated and is pitching for Eastern Illinois.

A good chunk of the Daily Chronicle all-area team also has graduated, but six first-teamers are back, along with high-upside young players. Storm is back for the Spartans after going 3-2 with a 1.62 ERA last season, with 54 strikeouts in 35 innings. Keifer Tarnoki, Griffin Hallahan and Owen Piazza are all back after earning first-team honors last season, with Hallahan and Piazza both pitching and playing in the field.

There were some small school standouts as well such as Genoa-Kingston junior Nolan Perry, who hit .409, and Hintzsche, the Hinckley-Big Rock senior, was an all-area second-teamer last year.