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Aaron Hankins' Kenwood Wildcats (70-84) were one of the better teams in TU West the last couple of years, winding up in second place and just losing the pennant by a game to the Bay St. Clair Buccaneers in 2030... and finishing third in 2031 behind Rolling Hills and Bay St. Clair... this season his Wildcats dropped down to seventh place, 13 games off the pace... Kenwood has only 3 postseason appearances to show for 31 years in the IPA... Hankins most successful season was in 2014, when the Wildcats copped the IPA Pro Cup trophy by whipping the Belair Beach Sunbirds in an exciting 7-game series... since then Kenwood has won only one division crown, that was in 2024.
Kenwood had the best team batting average in the TU with a strong .287 mark, topped only by the Elnora All-Stars of the Ruthlandian Union... Elnora batted a lofty .292 this year... but the Wildcats were subpar with a 3.86 team ERA (27th)... Hankins has two sons playing for his Wildcats and they are good ones... 26-year-old Matthew Hankins chalked up a .349 BA with 8 homers and 70 RBIs, while his 29-year-old brother batted .320 with 13 HRs, 95 RBIs and 92 runs... 2B Jeff Lang, SS Randy Towns and CF Alonzo Venacio also stood out with the bats... Lang hit .351 with 9 HRs, 52 RBIs and 77 runs... Towns batted .325 with 2 HRs, 59 RBIs and 93 runs... and Venacio slugged 18 HRs, drove in 86 runs and scored 89 times, while batting .268... Kenwood's most reliable pitchers were few... the best were Milt Flanagan (16-13/3.86) and Trigger Rogers (14-19/2.83).
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