As the new coach for the Lawrence Raiders, the bar has been set higher for Shaun Edmondson than it was for the four coaches before him.

Not only have the Raiders won the past four American Legion AAA state baseball titles, but last year’s team made the American Legion World Series for the first time in Raiders history.

“Our expectations are always high in Lawrence regardless of who’s coaching and who’s playing,” said Edmondson, who became the fifth different coach in the last five years. “But you also have to understand that there’s a brand-new coaching staff and pretty much three or four guys that played significant time last year. So it’s not like we’re rolling out the same team.

“But you don’t just assume, just because you’re Lawrence and you’re the defending state champion, that you’ll win games. So we want to take that approach and outwork everybody regardless of who we’re playing.”

The Raiders have just four returning members from last year’s squad: catcher Patrick Johnson and infielder John Novotny along with pitchers Kyle Cross and Daniel Green.

“Last year was a really talented team, but this year looks like it’s another pretty talented team, and we should have a chance to go pretty far,” Johnson said.

Besides the youth movement, Edmondson also has had difficulty filling out a schedule for the summer, with many teams suddenly having full schedules.

“I’m not saying that they don’t want to play us, but it’s crazy that I call all these coaches and everybody’s schedule is full,” said Edmondson, who played on the Raiders squad for two summers and was named team MVP in 1996. “They don’t even bother to say ‘What dates do you have open?’ It’s ‘We’re full,’ right away. It’s not necessarily an earned reputation by this team right here because we haven’t done anything; we haven’t play yet. But the Lawrence Raiders program has earned that reputation.”

To fill the slate, the Raiders have been scheduled to face the Kansas City Barnstormers eight times – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, considering Barnstormers coach Karl Carswell is a major-league baseball scout in the Midwest.

“That will be good for the kids to play in front of him so much – get that exposure that they all want,” Edmondson said.

Edmondson, a 1996 graduate of Lawrence High, knows the importance of getting to play in front of scouts. He spent a year as a defensive coach and recruiting coordinator at Neosho County Community College, and he served as an assistant at Hutchinson Community College for two years.

He also did some coaching for summer college baseball teams the last three summers in the Northwoods League and the Coastal Plains League.

“Having coached in the collegiate leagues was obviously a tremendous honor as far as getting to coach a lot of high-profile talented baseball players,” Edmondson said. “But this job, I had actually interviewed for it four years ago and didn’t get it, so I’m excited to get the opportunity. I definitely wasn’t ready when I interviewed for it the first time.”

During the spring, Edmondson did a little advanced scouting of his players by watching Free State and Lawrence High fight it out three times.

But watching future Raiders players wasn’t the only thing Edmondson was focusing on, as he was the skipper for the Eudora High baseball squad.

In the process, he got to “scout” one of his Raiders players first-hand: Eudora’s Matthew Abel – the only athlete for the Lawrence Legion team who didn’t go to FSHS or LHS.

“He approached me midway through the spring and asked if it were possible for him to come play for the Raiders, and he’s just such a good kid that it was a an easy decision,” Edmondson said. “He’s a tremendous athlete and one of the fastest kids that I’ve ever been around.”

Abel, a multi-sport athlete, said he doesn’t anticipate spending too much time in the role of outsider.

“Being the oddball, I want to gain everybody’s respect real quick and let them know that I’m a team player and that’s what I’m about – playing the game the right way,” Abel said.

The Raiders are scheduled to begin their season with two games starting at 2 p.m. today against the Barnstormers. They will face two other teams this weekend at Longview Community College in Lee’s Summit, Mo.