IRA, Texas (BCH Sports) – Redemption, revenge tour, unfinished business. All three of those are used to describe the Ira Bulldogs baseball season.

Head Coach Tony Goodwin explained, “You know it’s no secret our ultimate goal is to go to the show and compete there.”

It all came down to the last out in the third game of the Regional Final last year. No Ira team had ever been that far in the playoffs. Their road of going to state for the first time ended there, but the dream didn’t.

Anthony Luna said, “Well we just gotta put a lot of hard work in, remembering a lot of pain we went through that game and little errors that we made that we’ve never made before. We’ve been working a lot on that this year.”

Jeren Pena said, “Carrying on, throughout the seasons of football, basketball. Like that’s all that’s on my mind is the loss and that when we played them again I wanted it to be a different outcome. When you’re that close to state, it’s devastating.”

The Bulldogs are ranked second in the state Class A. If there was a year for them to be number one by the end of the season, it’s this one.

Bryton Partain said, “I mean we learned from a great group of leaders last year, and I think us seniors, we’ve brought that over to this year and we also have a lot of experience playing deep in the playoffs. We’ve never done that before either, I think that’s just gonna give us lots of experience going into it this year.”

Goodwin said, “That’s what it means ya know, it’s just so special to have this opportunity and to have this chance and we’re emotional yet competitive. It just means the world to us and the community is so far behind this group of guys and it’s just a joy to come to work everyday.”

The Bulldogs secured their seventh straight district title on Tuesday and now chasing more hardware.