Team Staying Together and “Mashing”
.
May 21, 2009 • written by Laura Foreman
Filed under Baseball, Sports, Sports Feature, featured
“To win twenty games and make it to the second round of regionals says a lot,” states Varsity Baseball Coach Bill Schott. Coming together as a fairly new team of individuals, Calvary Baseball is going above and beyond, given the brevity of the program’s history and experience. The team’s goal at the beginning of the season was to win the State Championship. Given their devastating loss against Highlands Christian to knock them out of regionals, senior second baseman Vince Alvarez says, “Things just didn’t go our way. We did our best, we did all we could do. It obviously wasn’t in God’s plan for us to win.”
For the graduating seniors who walked off of the field for the last time, a legacy has been established, as well as a foundation for next year. Coach Schott admits that, “it always hurts to say goodbye to the senior class,” and he commends each senior player: “Vince Alvarez has played seven straight years at CCA. I’ve never coached for CCA without him, and his leadership has always stood out. Mark Gregory showed unbelievable leadership as well, and Preston Gainey fit in as a leader of the team. It’s a hard thing for a new kid to fit in as a leader but he did it. Cliff Prem had a very busy schedule with the fine arts but he added enthusiasm, hustle, and a great work ethic.”
These four seniors were key to the team’s twenty victories, but interestingly, the majority of the players were neither juniors, nor seniors. Standing out specifically was freshman catcher Taylor Gushue, who led the county for home runs and RBI’s, and sophomore first baseman Emilio DeSilva, who “showed the team what is was to be a good teammate. We did pretty remarkably for having seven underclassmen on the field at all times. It was like a JV team,” says Schott. “We were real close,” says freshman Ryan Reilly, we were “always joking around,” and Schott agrees that he “saw God make us a team early in the year. Others-centeredness grew in the kids as they learned to look out for one another.” He comments on the depth of the team in that “after our last loss, the team was visibly hurt, which tells me they learned how to put their hearts into something.”
Alvarez leaves his team with a reminder to “stay together and ‘mash,’” as the goal of winning State’s remains in the back of each player’s mind for the 2010 baseball season.
Loading ...
Comments
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!