Patrick Smith has been a fixture in the Princeton Tiger dugout as former head coach Wick Warren’s right-hand man, manning the third base coach’s box and making mound visits the past three seasons when Warren’s health did not allow it.

The dugout is all Smith’s this season as he succeeds Warren, who retired after 10 years as the Tigers head coach. Smith said the transition has been pretty smooth thanks to the help of varsity assistants Tony Brucker and Caleb Dickens and the JV staff of Brock Hansen, Brent Yepsen and Garrett Allen.

“We have great assistant coaches so that helps quite a bit,” Smith said. “They have helped create high energy practices with guys moving around all over the place, so it’s been a lot of fun in the early going.

“I thought our first week went really well. The guys are working hard and learning a lot.”

Senior Ryan Jagers said things are a little bit different this year under Smith to help their hitting and pitching.

“We have changed our practices a little bit and have been working on our speed and agility more this year,” he said. “We have been doing a lot more live hitting against our pitchers and not just the machine. We lost most of our team from last year, so we’ve got a lot of inexperienced guys this year, but I like the group we got this year. We all come ready to practice everyday and want to compete against each other.

“We have been putting in work these past couple weeks getting a little bit better everyday. We have a busy and tough schedule this year and we are all looking forward to the competition.”

The Tigers return seniors Tyler Forristall, Cayden Benavidez, Jagers and Stihl Brokaw, junior Braden Shaw and sophomore Jack Oester, all who have varsity experience.

The roster is rounded out by juniors Reed Jesse, Hunter Spiegel, Abram Longeville, Noah Morton, Hayden Sayler and Luke LaPorte.

“I’m really excited for the season. Obviously, we lost a lot of production from last year’s lineup, but we still have six guys with significant varsity experience coming back,” Smith said. “They will all need to play bigger roles than they have in the past, so hopefully they can take a big step this year. Overall, I’ve been really pleased so far with our guys’ approach to practice and the energy they’ve had.”

After the first week of practice, Smith said player positions are still being figured out with “most of our guys repping two or three different positions on any given day.”

The Tigers will need to replace the offense lost with the graduation of its top four bats from last year - Ace Christiansen (.434), Jordan Reinhardt (.419), Noah LaPorte (.382) and Nolan Kloepping (.361).

Another question in the Tiger camp is whether senior southpaw Forristall, a returning first team all-conference pitcher, will be able to pitch this season coming off a shoulder injury. He went 2-2 with a 3.15 ERA and 31 strikeouts in 26 innings before being shut down last year.

While Smith said it’s too early to know who is going to take over as their top arms, he has plenty of options.

“We don’t know how much or if Tyler will be able to pitch at all this season,” Smith said. “Jagers and Shaw each saw some time on the mound last year, but we expect to get good innings out of Benavidez, Morton, Spiegel, Sayler, Oester and LaPorte, too.”

The Tigers will open the season on a three-game road stand starting on Thursday, March 19 at Sterling followed by trips to Dixon on Saturday, March 21 and Streator on Monday, March 23. They will play their home opener Thursday, March 26 against Rock Falls.