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CHOCOWINITY, N.C. — Luke Bullock is a junior at Southside High School. However, he’s already playing a veteran role on the Beaufort County Junior American Legion baseball team.

Bullock was a pitcher and also played first base this past season for the Seahawks. With the season over, he’s again lending his talents to the junior legion team. He’s in his third season playing with Post 15. On Monday, he struck out 10 as he and pitcher Sam Mullis gave up just three hits with 16 strikeouts in the team’s season-opening 5-1 win over Ahoskie.

We talked with Bullock about the differences between playing high school baseball and legion, his expectations for the season and more.

1. Let me ask you about your expectations for the season because you’re one of the veterans on the team, based on who is back from last season. What do you like about this team?

“I think we have a lot of depth. We are somewhat young, but my expectation is that when we make the state championship, and we have the last two years, we’ll ultimately win a state championship.”

2. You’ve got players from all over, Pungo Christian, Northside, Southside and Washington. You were competitors during the high school season and now you’re teammates. What’s that been like?

“I like having a competition during the school season, and coming here, meeting new people from the schools that I’ve faced, and the nature of going back at it with the people that I now know.”

3. Talk about Monday’s game. You had 10 strikeouts against Ahoskie. You did relatively well to get the season started off on the right foot.

“I felt like as a team we did really, really good, but as for myself, I could have commanded the ball a little bit better, but overall I felt like I did very solid. But as a team, I feel like we did really, really well.”

4. Coach Bobby Boyd said if you play good defense and have good pitching, the two things are going to work the best for you and that hitting will come along. Do you feel the same way and are there any differences between playing baseball in school and with legion?

“I think (Monday) night we did exactly what he’s been talking about. We had great pitching and we had great defense, and we won. Meeting all of our new teammates from all across all the schools and going to travel to places and playing new teams that we have not played before, like in school.”

5. You had a busy season at Southside. How does playing legion baseball help as far as your aspirations of playing once school is over? Do you want to go to college to play baseball?

“This helps me out a lot, stay more in the groove of baseball. I do plan on playing college, so this is good for keeping me in the groove.”