It is a year of change for the Suffolk Christian Academy baseball program. It features a new coach and a largely new varsity team.

SCA athletic director Nat Aydlett takes over as coach of the Knights with approximately 20 years of baseball coaching experience.

Included in that history is six years as a head coach at Atlantic Scores Christian School and three years as an assistant coach at Greenbrier Christian Academy under head coach Gary Lavelle.

“In those three years, we won three straight (state) titles with them,” Aydlett said.

Aydlett has had similar success as a football coach.

Now he faces the challenge of leading a Suffolk Christian baseball team that is small and young.

The Knights have played one varsity game so far this season, falling narrowly 4-3 to host Peninsula Catholic High School on Thursday. Despite the loss, Aydlett liked what he saw from his players.

“They kind of exceeded my expectations, because, really, we’re a (junior varsity) team with two seniors,” he said. “That’s just where we are, and we’re very limited in our numbers.”

The squad currently features 10 players, with one junior, four sophomores, two freshmen and an eighth-grader to go along with the two seniors.

“We bring a seventh-grader up because he’s really, right now, our main backup catcher,” Aydlett said. “There’s only three guys from the roster of 15 last year.”

Several players from the 2015 Knights migrated over to a newly-formed home school squad that practices out of Suffolk and Smithfield.

The Knights produced an overall record of 13-4-1 during the 2015 season. They went 7-0-1 within the Hampton Roads Athletic Conference during the regular season and then won their third consecutive conference tournament championship.

The baseball landscape of the HRAC has changed a bit this year from last season.

“We don’t have but three (schools) in the conference that are fielding programs this year,” Aydlett said.

The three active teams include the Summit Christian Academy Eagles, the Beach Breakers and the Suffolk Christian Knights.

“All we’re going to have is a regular season champion,” Aydlett said, noting that four teams are needed to have a conference tournament that determines a conference title.

The plans are still for the season to conclude with some kind of tournament, though.

“It’s going to be just an invitational-type tournament rather than a conference tournament,” Aydlett said. “That’s what we’re looking into just to give these guys still something else to play at the end of the year.”

Though the Knights opened the season with a non-conference game, they will be well acquainted with their conference opponents this season.

“We’re playing each other four times, just to get some games in,” Aydlett said. “Our goal and objective this year is just to try to build the program, to develop the program.”

Noting that he has a good core of young players, the coach said, “We have a pretty decent JV team,” but it will also tackle the challenge of a varsity schedule.

The Knights are playing a split schedule with some games being for JV and not counting against the varsity team’s record.

The varsity team’s defense features senior Michael Cornette as its No. 1 pitcher, with senior Steven Porter playing at catcher. Aydlett said his other pitchers include sophomore Patrick Driggers, freshman Austin Aydlett and eighth-grader Alex Feeney.

The coach is still looking for his standouts on offense only one varsity and one JV game into the season.

“First two games, we haven’t hit the ball real well,” he said, but he knows the direction he is going in terms of playing style. “We’re going to be a small ball-type team, try to play more of the college style of baseball here.”

Suffolk Christian (0-1) visits Summit Christian Academy on Thursday.