By STEPHEN GLOVER

For the Call

After losing to Ballwin in the American Legion District 10 Tournament last week, some may believe that the Oakville baseball club’s season has ended.

But that isn’t the case this year as Oakville serves as the host to the American Legion Zone Tournament this week at Heine Meine ballpark.

Oakville (20-20, 9-9 District 10) has been noted as being one of the more talented clubs in the area this season, and Head Coach Ryan Hetzer hopes his troops can rise up and play to their abilities.

“We had a pretty good run in the District 10 tournament,” Hetzer told the Call. “We feel pretty good about ourselves and we’ve got two very good pitchers whom we can put up against anybody. We have a nice lineup and we feel that we’re right there with all the other teams.”

At 8 p.m. today — July 31 — Oakville is slated to play the winner of District 13, which will be either DeSoto or Festus.

Hetzer hopes his squad can jump out of the gate on a hot streak and go from there.

“We’re hoping that we can come out on Thursday and win that first game,” Hetzer said.

“We actually know that if we win that game, we’ll play Anheuser-Busch and we’d like to have another chance to play them because they defeated us in their own tournament,” the coach added.

When Oakville faced Anheuser-Busch at Heine Meine, it suffered one of its worst losses of the season in an 11-0 thumping.

“We’d like to have the chance to see them (Anheuser-Busch) again and try to avenge that loss,” Hetzer said. “We have a good outlook, but we know that it’s going to be tough. When you get down to this point in the season, every team is a very strong team and you’re going to see good pitching night in and night out.”

The championship game of the tournament is slated for 7 p.m. Saturday.