High school baseball coaches don’t enjoy the benefits of spring training. High school baseball coaches in Maine are even more under the gun when it comes to getting their team ready for the season because Mother Nature typically allows little quality preseason outdoor time.

It’s especially difficult for a coach who has to deal with a lot of roster turnover. Oxford Hills coach Shane Slicer lost all but one starter and four players overall off his Class A title-winning roster and is still getting to know his team two weeks into the season.

“I still am evaluating,” Slicer said, following the Vikings’ 10-0 loss to Lewiston on Monday. “Today we brought up an extra guy from the freshman team. We had 15 guys. I always carry 12 to 13. We’ve had a couple of injuries so they haven’t been able to get on the field. We’re still evaluating, every single day.”

So far, Slicer’s starting lineup has usually featured three freshmen, five sophomores, one junior and one senior. Heading into Friday’s game against Cony, the Vikings were 2-2, with wins over Morse and Edward Little and losses to Lewiston and Brunswick.

Slicer isn’t concerned about the team’s record so much now as the day-to-day improvement from his youthful lineup.

“We’re young no matter who the starters are,” Slicer said. “We understand we’re going to take some lumps, so our goal is to squeak by on a couple of wins here and there, play ‘D’, and put the ball in play.”

Doughty’s day

Lisbon High School will dedicate its baseball field in honor of Stan Doughty prior to next Tuesday’s game against Livermore Falls, which starts at 4:30.

Doughty, a 2009 inductee into the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame, was a star infielder for Lisbon and Colby College in the late 1940’s-early 1950’s. He played semi-pro baseball for several local town teams and also coached Lisbon for 20 years.

Lisbon coach Randy Ridley said pre-game ceremonies will include Doughty throwing out the ceremonial first pitch to another Hall-of-Famer from Lisbon, George Ferguson, who was inducted in 2010.

“It will be great for the kids to see and I know Stan is tickled to death about it,” Ridley said.

MVC, Minus Varsity Carrabec

A number of Mountain Valley Conference teams had to scramble to fill out their schedules for this spring after Carrabec announced that it would not be fielding a varsity team.

Some schools were able to fill the void fairly easily. Livermore Falls, for example, added games against rival Jay and Mountain Valley and will now play each team three times. Others, such as Telstar, struggled to fill out the schedule with just six other teams playing varsity in the MVC North.

“We lost two games and could only pick up one,” Telstar coach Bob Remington said. “Nobody wanted to play us three times.”

Telstar did add a third game against Mt. Abram, but the Rebels still aren’t particularly happy with their schedule because it is very front-loaded.

“We play eight of our 14 games in the first two weeks,” Remington said.

The Rebels have four games scheduled for next week, including three days in a row — Monday at home against Mountain Valley, Wednesday at Jay, Thursday home against Madison, and home against Mt. Abram on Friday.