Lawrence’s Raiders have won two straight state American Legion AAA baseball titles under two different head coaches.

Can they make it three in a row under a third head coach?

“That’s putting the pressure on me,” first-year Raiders’ boss Kevin Tucker said with a chuckle.

The Raiders won a state championship in 2003 under Carl Brooks, who then retired. A year later, the Raiders won it all under Reggie Christiansen, a KU assistant coach who now is head baseball coach at South Dakota State.

Tucker, 35, replaced Christiansen on Ritch Price’s staff at KU, and now he’s taking over the Raiders, who will open in a 6 p.m. doubleheader today against Topeka Post 74 at the Capital City’s Hummer Park.

“From what I’ve seen,” Tucker said of his players, “we’ll have a lot of good athletes and some power arms.”

Tucker hasn’t seen much. The Raiders’ first practice was Tuesday night.

“I haven’t seen them more than a handful of times,” Tucker said, “but I’m pretty excited about the pitching staff.”

The Raiders are a mix of the best players from the city’s two high schools with a couple of players from area schools and college freshmen thrown in. Free State High products on the roster are pitchers Max Ellenbecker and Travis Blankenship, pitcher/outfielder Jake Hoover, third baseman Cory Cooper, outfielder Brett Lisher and first baseman Lorenzo Ricketts.

Lisher and Hoover were starters on the Raiders team that defeated Pittsburg, 14-5, for the Legion AAA title last summer in Chanute. The others were on the Lawrence Bandits team that won the 2004 Legion A title.

Lawrence High players with the Raiders are pitcher Matt Wingert, infielder Matt Falk, pitcher/first baseman Will Falk, and outfielders Brian Heere and Tyler Knight.

The Raiders’ catchers will be Hogan Matson of Kansas City Piper and Cole Massey of Eudora. Also on the roster are infielder Tommy Fitzgerald of Mill Valley, Grant Meisenheimer of Baldwin and Paul Metzler, who played for Free State in 2004.

Again this summer, the Lawrence Amateur Baseball Assn., funded primarily by the Legion’s Dorsey-Liberty post, will field two AAA Legion teams. The Outlaws, who qualified for last year’s state tourney, will be coached by Adam Green and Brad Romme, two members of FSHS head coach Mike Hill’s staff.

The Outlaws’ roster mostly will be composed of Free State junior-varsity players. The Outlaws will open Friday in the Topeka 400 Invitational.

At the A level, LABA again will sponsor the Bandits and Mavericks. Hill is in charge of the Bandits, a team composed mostly of Free State C-teamers, and Lawrence High coach Brad Stoll runs the Mavericks, a developmental LHS club.

“Our goal is state titles,” said Lee Ice, an LABA board member. “The Raiders are going for a threepeat, which has never happened, and the Bandits won in A last year.”

Ice stressed the quality and quantity of the LABA program is directly related to the commitment of the Dorsey-Liberty post.

“There are still a lot of American Legion posts trying to do what we do,” Ice said. “We have four teams, and most posts are trying to field just one.”