Reed baseball has not had many eras in the program’s history, but a new one is about to start.

When the Raiders take on Douglas to open the regular season Thursday, it will mark Nick Royle’s first game as the skipper in the RHS dugout.

Royle, Reed High’s fourth coach in the past 25-plus years, was hired during the summer and replaced Jon Foss, who headed the Raiders for the past five seasons.

But head coaching is a little different from what Royle was doing as an assistant in the Wooster program since 2004 and the first-time varsity head coach is still adjusting.

“For me, it (the hardest part) is trying to start a program I see Reed becoming, the type of program it should always have been,” Royle said.

Royle’s main goal is to bring Reed back to its prominence. Although the Raiders have overachieved the past two springs and reached the Northern 4A semifinals, it was a far cry from when the Blue and Gold won the High Desert League and qualified for the state tournament in 2004, Foss’s first year.

Helping him do it this year will be seven key returners, led by four-year starter senior Casey Yocom. Yocom, a Western Nevada College signee, will pitch some and play shortstop. He was also one of the HDL’s leading hitters last year, batting .527 in league contests.

“It’s been great,” Royle said of having Yocom. “With Casey he kind of had a rough year last year. But with the new program, he’s really come around. He’s adjusted well. He’s been a guy we’re going to count a lot on, and it’s good to have someone that can be the captain on the field. He’s really good at helping out the young guys on the team.”

The pitching rotation isn’t set in stone for the Raiders. Royle will use this weekend’s Mike Bearman Memorial Tournament to see which of his pitchers will step up and where they will fit into the rotation. At this point, Yocom, Taylor Valentine and Sam Petrie will likely see a lot of mound time as returning pitchers.

Of the 12 pitchers on staff, several are southpaws, a big bonus in high school baseball where left-handers are hard to come by.

“All of our left-handers are underclassmen. It’s going to be a test for them,” Royle said. “I know my pitching coaches are very excited to have left-handed pitchers.”

Half the Raiders’ roster is comprised of seniors, but Reed is not a very experienced squad. Seniors Chris Hawthorne, Fabian Reza and Duran DiQuarto all were in the starting lineup quite a bit last season. Junior Derek Garcia was also an occasional starter.

But Reed also has four sophomores and one freshman on the team, bringing some young blood into the varsity squad.

Still, sentiments are positive about the upcoming season at the east Sparks school.

Royle believes his team’s strengths will be leadership and hopefully mental toughness, which are things that somewhat lacked with the Blue and Gold the past few years.

“All the coaches and myself are excited. I know the guys are excited. They’ve been counting down the past couple of weeks to game time,” Royle said. “They’re sick and tired of playing each other. They want to play someone else.”

Reed will get that chance when it hosts three games in the Mike Bearman Memorial Tournament. Douglas comes to town for a 3 p.m. game Thursday, while Santa Clara and McQueen will be the opponents in Friday’s 3 p.m and 6 p.m. games. The Raiders will then travel to Damonte Ranch Saturday for the final pool play game at 10 a.m.

With Royle coming over from Wooster, he is fairly familiar with the three teams that switched from the Sierra League to the High Desert. He expects a very tough battle getting into the playoffs.

“On our side, it’s going to be tough. We don’t have a week we can take off,” Royle said.