The Nansemond-Suffolk Academy baseball team lost 10 players from last year’s squad due to graduation, but the 2015 Saints have proven in their opening games this week that talent remains and new talent has emerged on the roster.

NSA defeated visiting Hampton Roads Academy 16-9 on Thursday, rebounding from Tuesday’s 7-6 season-opening loss to visiting Covenant School, a top team in the Saints’ division at the state level.

On Thursday, “offensively, we played well,” Nansemond-Suffolk coach David Mitchell said. “We actually jumped to an 8-0 lead going into the fourth inning.”

But he said the Saints experienced kind of a mental lapse after this, similar to Tuesday when they let a 6-1 lead over Covenant slip away. HRA launched a big comeback to shrink NSA’s lead to 8-7.

But then junior Hunter Foster pitched a third of the fourth inning along with all of the fifth and sixth, and sophomore James Mullin pitched the seventh, each of them throwing well.

“Those two guys really did a great job of stopping the game and limiting HRA’s offensive performance from that fourth inning on,” Mitchell said.

Foster ended up with the win, and Mullin contributed two strikeouts in the seventh.

Nansemond-Suffolk spread the hits around on offense, totaling 13 for the game.

Junior Cole Williams went 3-for-3 with two runs batted in, senior Toby Buchanan was 3-for-5 with two RBIs, junior Trent Taylor went 2-for-4 with three RBIs and junior Dominick Claxton was 2-for-4 with two RBIs.

Some of those players could end up filling the leadership void the Saints are experiencing after the graduation-keyed exodus.

The most notable contributors from among those graduates were Greg Beale, the team’s No. 1 pitcher, and Jake Grady, a talented hitter. Both earned first team all-conference and first team all-state honors last year, and Beale is now pitching at Randolph-Macon College.

NSA went 14-7 overall in 2014, finishing second in the conference tournament and advancing as far as the state quarterfinals.

This year, the Saints have nine juniors, three seniors, three freshmen and two sophomores, and Mitchell has not altered his regular expectations, looking for his team to perform on a similar level to last year.

Mitchell noted Nansemond-Suffolk’s offense has been consistently strong in his years as coach.

“We’re averaging about seven runs a game,” he said. “There’s just some things defensively and from a pitching standpoint we’ve got to be a little more consistent at.”

The coach is encouraged by the creation of a junior junior varsity baseball team at NSA this year, for sixth- through eighth-graders. The JV team features players in eighth and ninth grade and the varsity team focuses on ninth and up.

“I feel like we finally have a program,” Mitchell said.

He provides oversight to ensure the JJV and JV coaching will help prepare players for varsity.

Having both of those younger teams “kind of lays the groundwork for the future in terms of consistency,” he said.

As for 2015, helping the varsity cause along with the stars of the HRA game will be junior outfielder Sam Neal, senior outfielder Alberto Smith and sophomore catcher Mitchell Williams.

Mullin and junior pitcher Eric Huffman are up-and-comers.

Nansemond-Suffolk (1-1) visits The Steward School on Monday.