As the weather gets warmer, Charleston High School baseball is gearing up for the 2025 season.  

The Trojans are coming off a 14-16 season and a third-place finish in the Apollo Conference standings, finishing 5-5. 

Charleston has had fluctuating results in the Apollo conference standings the past few seasons, finishing fifth in 2023 and 2021, and second in 2022. 

“I think we got a lot to prove in conference,” Charleston manager Daniel Bennett said.  “We’ve been about .500 the last four years.” 

The Trojans open conference play on April 5 at Mattoon in a doubleheader and their next conference matchup is a doubleheader against the reigning conference champion, Mahomet-Seymour, on April 19.  

“The important games come early,” Bennett said. 

The Trojans are also eyeing a run in the playoffs. 

The last post season win for Charleston came in the 2021 Illinois High School Association Class 3A Sectional finals against Triad. Charleston won three games before that one on the way to its sectional championship.  

“We haven’t won a postseason game in four years, so that’s our main focus,” Bennett said. “Get deep in the post season.”  

Bennett said the most improved aspect of the team is the defense. 

“We’ve had some really good practices here pretty early, and guys are bought in,” Bennett said. “They’re ready to go. We got people set in positions they got a lot of experience last year so we can build off that and I think we’re going to be pretty solid defensively.” 

Charleston’s power last year mostly came from two seniors: first baseman Aidan Archibald with eight home runs and third baseman Brett Spour with two home runs. The team in total got 13 home runs. The Trojans also stole 40 bases, according to MaxPreps.  

“We lost a little bit of power, but I think we’re going to be kind of more of a [batting] average team,” Bennett said. “We’ve got some speed. You want to be able to steal some bases.” 

According to Bennett, the team has a lot of experience. 

“I’m excited because we have quite a bit of seniors returning from last year, we got a lot of playing experience last year with the juniors last year,” Bennett said. “We got a lot of varsity experience coming back so I think we’re pretty good. We got a lot of arms so we should be competitive in most games.” 

One of those returning seniors is outfielder and right-handed pitcher Luke Bonnstetter. 

“I think the ceiling for us this year is very high,” Bonnstetter said. “We had a lot of people coming back and our JV team we got a lot of kids from there and they won 20 plus games.”  

According to Bonnstetter, the team has built a great relationship with each other. 

“We have great camaraderie,” Bonnstetter said. “We do everything together, stretch, talk, we’re always talking to each other, always joking with one another and that’s a big part of baseball is having each other’s backs and the camaraderie between each other.” 

Charleston’s first game of the season is at home against Champaign Centennial High School on March 17 at 4:30 p.m. 

Jason Coulombe can be reached at 581-2812 or at jmcoulombe@eiu.edu.