Wando Baseball: 2006 By: Jeff Blankenship-Head Coach, April 28, 2006 Season Overview: Entering the 2006 baseball season, the coaching staff at Wando felt like we had a solid core of returning players along with some potential role players moving up from the Junior Varsity. The problem was experience, or lack thereof, as we returned only four starters from the previous year: Nick Sprowls, Brett Thomas, Lonnie Ferguson and Cole Rakar. The addition of Sam Mahoney, a USC signee, instantly boosted the excitement of our program in the off-season. As a first-year coach, it was important to me to establish goals for the program and establish leadership from the top down. We began in August with our weight room kick-off that would later have over one hundred players lifting with the baseball program. We feel like we became a team by spending more time working together in the off-season, especially from Thanksgiving until the Christmas Break. An undefeated regular season is not something we had talked about as a team. I did not imagine that anyone would go undefeated in our region as I believed that Region VII was the toughest of the eight AAAA regions. Every team had at least one dominant pitcher and four to five solid hitters. If you noticed last week, Region VII had four teams represented in Lower State District Championships. Strong pitching and defense, as well as timely hitting, helped us clinch the title with three games to play. Rakar and Thomas were solid at short and second while we were able to rotate outfielders Jamie Childers, Jim Johnson, Grayson King, Chris Harbit and Drew Sheridan. The H.I.T. Tournament provided an opportunity for our pitching staff to develop as starters Clarke Hinson, Brian Cisco and Sheridan all earned victories against out-of-state teams. District Overview: We began to prepare for Lower State District play the day after our first loss to James Madison from Virginia. We practiced the next day, the Friday of our Spring Break, and came back on Monday refocused on the task at hand. We opened up with Colleton County. This was a team that was going to be very aggressive at the plate and had defeated Hilton Head in their last game of the regular season to earn a berth in the playoffs. Rakar, Thomas and Childers all had multiple hits to lead us to a 9-4 victory. We then faced Richland Northeast. They were a team with a 12-12 record but had the potential to score a lot of runs in a hurry. I knew about Chris Love and Shawn Glover from our own players who play on the same summer teams. Nick Chinners and David Greene also impressed us on a day when rain threatened to stop the game at any time. We ended up winning 11-1 in five innings as the bottom of our line-up went 10-for-15. The playoff format rewarded us by giving us a bye as we awaited the winner of the South Florence/Richland Northeast game. We had our pitching lined up to start Rakar (8-1) in Game 1 and Sprowls (8-0) Game 2. After rain on Wednesday, we set out to potentially play a doubleheader knowing how important it was to win Game 1. With the next games on Saturday and Monday, we knew two long outings by our starting pitchers might burn them for our next two games. We had a great opportunity in the fourth inning to blow the game open as Childers doubled into rightfield to drive in a run. Runners were left at second and third with no outs, but Clay Mitchell pitched out of a jam from there to leave the score at 2-0. After we tacked on a run in the fifth to make it 3-0, Love hit a hanging breaking ball that still has not landed over the leftfield fence. With two outs in the bottom of the seventh, sophomore Jim Johnson drove a 0-1 fastball over Brandon Faust’s head in center field. I looked to Johnson to make sure he was looking for extra bases when he began to trot as the umpire signaled “home run.” I was just as surprised as all of his teammates, who were waiting at the plate and a dysfunctional dog-pile ensued. This was our nine-hole hitter but this homerun is just one of many clutch performances a number of different players have turned in this season. Lower State Finals Outlook: We received word shortly after that Spring Valley had defeated James Island and would be traveling to Warrior Field on Saturday. A local travel coach told me they are the mirror image of our team and swing the bats well one through nine in their line-up. We are preparing to see Matt Branham, a senior with three quality pitches. Various coaches have informed me about Jeff Johnson, Rob Harding and Timmy Taylor as other impact players. In the spring of 1997, I met the coach of the Vikings, Charlie Wentzky (left), on his recruiting trip to the College of Charleston. He was a workhorse on the mound at CofC and it has been good to see him at different clinics and camps the last couple of years. He has done a tremendous job in his second season at Spring Valley and I hope we are up for the challenge this Saturday. Spring Valley Baseball: 2006 By: Charlie Wentzky-Head Coach, April 28, 2006 Season Overview: Before the season started we set two goals for ourselves. The first was to win a region championship, which was something that hadn’t been done at Spring Valley since 1987. We accomplished that finishing 10-0 in Region 5. Our second goal was to win twenty games. I thought if we set the bar high, we would end with 15-18 wins. After starting the year 2-2, I didn’t see us making that 20 win mark. We went on to win 12 straight games until we lost at Sumter in early April. At that point we were 14-3 with six …
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