There’s no better sign that summer has arrived then high school baseball season starting after Memorial Day, and two local teams will meet on the diamond tonight on KCII when the Highland Huskies host the Washington Demons.

It’s the season opener for Washington, who is looking to improve on a 5-21 record last year and end a stretch of three straight losing seasons. The Demon lineup will be led by junior Kael Williams, who had team highs of a .320 batting average and 24 runs scored.

Sophomore Blayze Richardson will not only contribute at the plate after he hit .304 and was third on the team with 21 total hits in his rookie season, but he’ll pair with senior Conner Leyden to power a pitching staff that is looking to make strides. Washington head coach TJ Rausch tells KCII Sports that he feels the whole team is poised to make a leap.

“We have two-thirds of our starting roster coming back this year,” Rausch says, “so [we are] excited to have those pieces back [and] we have a lot of young talent that are going to be coming in and have already started competing for those catcher and third-base spots that have been our open positions.”

The Demons will be facing a Highland team that fell to Mid-Prairie in its first game of this season but is coming off a strong 2024 where they won 11 games and finished second in the North division of the Southeast Iowa Super Conference.

The Huskies have a potent tandem of hitters in William Dunbar and Logan McFarland, who each batted better than .333 last summer and combined for 35 runs batted in.

Fellow senior Colten Sypherd is the ace pitcher for Highland, allowing just a 2.07 earned-run average in almost 41 innings of work last season. Head coach Allen Rath tells KCII Sports that his pitching staff is a strong one overall, they just need to pair it with consistent hitting.

“We’ve got rightys and leftys that pound the strike zone,” Rath says. “If we can have some of the hitters have a little breakout season, I think we can make some noise.”

Washington won last’s year matchup with Highland 8-3, but the two teams have split the previous four meetings. You can hear the Demons take on the Huskies this evening on 102.5 FM and AM 1380 KCII, as well as streaming on KCIIradio.com and the KCII2 app, starting with pregame coverage at 5 o’clock.