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While the baseball season is over for the Pahrump Valley Trojans high school teams, many of the players will hit the diamond this summer as members of the the American Legion Post 22 team.

The Trojans' first game is Saturday at Eldorado High School, where they'll face Green Valley at 5 p.m. and Foothill at 8 p.m. in a Silver Division American Legion doubleheader. Eldorado is located in east Las Vegas.

Doug Marion, the high school team's head coach, is also overseeing the team's summer program, although Jim McHugh and Urbano Sanchez will head the Legion team specifically.

The main objective for the team in its Legion play isn't necessarily to win championships, Marion said. Rather, it's to keep in shape and warm up for Pahrump Valley's 2008 Southern Nevada Class 3-A campaign.

"The program doesn't have any expectations for the Legion season," Marion said. "We're just trying to build on what we did during the varsity season." Pahrump Valley was 7-9 in Southern games, 4-4 in the post-season and 17-19-2 in all games during the 2007 spring campaign.

What they built this spring was a strong team that saw six players record combined league and non-league batting averages of over .400. Austin Garza, Cody Nielsen, and Ethan Wald were all in that group, as were Danny Miller, Jarrett Holley and Iggy Wagner, all of whom batted over .500.

The team's pitching staff performed well, too, with Tyrell Smith leading the pack in strikeouts with 59. Smith recorded a 2.25 ERA in 36 innings pitched. Dax Duesing pitched 26 innings, had 29 strikeouts and finished the season with a 2.46 ERA. Nielsen pitched 17.1 innings, finished with a 1.58 ERA and recorded 14 strikeouts, as well as a pair of saves.

A team that posts stats like those undoubtedly has potential, and the team's summer plans are designed to capitalize on that.

"These kids need to get stronger and that's going to be a big part of our summer program," Marion said. "We made the transition into summer mode and we've been working a lot on cage hitting.

"Mainly the season is just to get the kids more experience and let them get more repetitions and see more pitches," said Marion.

Also playing this summer will be Danny Cazier, Ronnie Torres, Brandon Uyeno, Corey Veloz, Tyler Lepley, A.J. Craighead, Jacob Rush and 2006 PVHS grad Alex Bietar.

Ray Wagner and Justin Mills, a former Trojan himself, have signed on as assistant coaches.

The team's first home games will be June 11. They'll face Las Vegas Calvary Chapel in a doubleheader starting at 5 p.m. at Honeysuckle Park. Calvary Chapel won the Nevada Class A state baseball championship.

NOTES--In addition to their batting averages, many of the 2007 Trojans posted high stats in other categories ... Tyrell Smith led the team in home runs. He had three, while Danny Miller had two and Dax Duesing had one ... Miller recorded the most RBI, with 49, as well as the most hits, with 51 ... Ethan Wald had 32, while Duesing and Iggy Wagner each had 26. Wagner led the team with 30 bases and scored 44 runs... In the Silver Division is Arbor View; the Aggies' varsity team made a big splash in the Class 4-A state tournament, eventually won by Las Vegas Bishop Gorman, which also has a Silver Division team ... Also in the division are Chaparral, Cheyenne, Del Sol, Legacy, Durango, Shadow Ridge, Foothill, Sierra Vista, Centennial, Rancho, Western, Palo Verde, Vo-Tech (which reportedly will become a Southern 3-A league member in 2008), Liberty, Desert Pines, and Faith Lutheran (the 2007 state 3-A champion).