The Andalusia Bulldogs’ varsity baseball squad enters the 2016 season with a number of returning starters, and they are looking to build off last season’s experience.

“Last year, we were a really young team,” Bulldog head coach Tyler Dent said. “We didn’t have a lot of guys that had any experience at the varsity level.”

Dent said the experience gained by those players will be crucial to the team’s success this season.

“Experience will be huge,” Dent said. “We had to throw guys straight into the fire last year with no experience. This year, we will have guys in the fire that have been there before, and we will see how they react.”

One thing that Dent said this team has a lot of is work ethic.

“The work ethic of this group is great,” Dent said. “We are all excited about Monday getting here and us being able to go full speed.”

When Monday rolls around, Dent said the Bulldogs will focus heavily on game situations.

“We will go live game speed on Monday,” Dent said. “We will do some inter squad games, and try to simulate live game speed as much as we can.”

The strong suit for the Bulldogs this season will be their pitching staff, Dent said.

“Coach Tyler Wilson has done a heck of job the past few weeks working with them,” Dent said. “He has been working a lot with their mechanics and their mindset, and he has done and outstanding job.”

As for the leaders of the team, Dent said he expects his eight seniors to take on that role.

“We have eight seniors and they are just a great group of kids,” Dent said. “They have been in the program for the past four years, and they have all worked extremely hard over the summer. I’m excited to see how far they have come.”

The Bulldogs will start the regular season with two tough opponents when they face Benjamin Russell and Park Crossing on Feb. 15, at LBWCC.

“We are going to find out quickly what we are made of,” Dent said. “We start the season with some very good opponents. Our first two games will tell us a lot about our team. Benjamin Russell and Park Crossing are both very good teams and they are well coached.”