P/Shortstop Tyler Gaudreau
As some of you know, during the spring I was the assistant coach of my alma-mater Putnam High School baseball team. Those of you who are friends on Facebook probably know how much I enjoyed my first year coaching for high school and got a slight idea of how much we get attached to the kids. I was surprised myself, as to how I gradually went from my quiet, shy self, to a yelling and screaming fan/coach.
If anyone could of seen me at our last game, that was an emotional rollercoaster, marathon, where we were down 5-0 in the first couple of innings, but our pitcher settled down and we came back to tied the game going into the bottom of the 7th inning(high school only plays 7 innings compared to 9 innings in professional baseball).
Our starting senior pitcher, Artie Scott(who pitched his heart out for one hell of a game), and our junior catcher, John "Waldo" Waldron.
We had our two best hitters to lead off the inning, and we just knew this was gonna be our inning.
Brian Gardner, one of our best hitters, and one hell of a 3rd baseman who played most the year with a shoulder problem(to the point where we had to move him to 1st base to limit his throwing) was leading off to start our last at bats. Everyone had that feeling that we were headed for a walk-off win!
Brian in a game, earlier in the season
The third pitch to our best hitting senior was a fastball that tailed in and hit him square in the face! He went down on the ground with blood pouring out of his face for about 10 minutes, with us trying to get the bleeding to stop from an obvious broken nose. We eventually got it to slow down, and as his mom drove off to the hospital, with him holding a towel to his face, he yelled out the window "LET's GO BLUE, WIN THIS!!!" Now emotions were extreme, and it felt even more like our inning. We eventually had a play go down at home plate with two outs, where thought we had won the game, but the umpire made a completely wrong call, and the inning ended without us scoring. We fought all the way to the tenth inning before losing the game, 6-5. Our last team meeting on the field after the game took place near 2nd base, away from the parents and fans, where the coach and I became emotional, and we thanked the kids for a great season(although our record didn't reflect it).
Brian, two days after the game. Doesn't even look like him!
We had a great group of seniors, including two team captains that were not only field generals, but great defensive players, and our two best hitters. Throughout the season, we had opposing coach, after coach tell us how impressed they were with them, and how they'd love to have them as players. Yet when it came time for the All-star votes, one of them got honorable mention, and the other recieved a sportsmanship award. It's sad to see how hard they worked, how great they performed, only to get snubbed by those coaches that praised them so much. The coach and myself could say we almost feel like a parent would feel, if their kid didn't get to play in a little league game! Needless to say, we were very pissed off when we found out they didn't get enough votes! LOL
I'm not sure, however, if the school, our athletic director, and the coaches' voicing their concerns about our league had anything to do with it. We're a Class "S" (small school) with a limited amount of students to pick from, playing Class "M" (medium) and Class "L" (large) schools that could field two or three teams. So the school has decided to start the process of leaving the league, and going to a smaller "tech" school league, where most of our competion went several years ago when the "Quinebaug Valley Conference" disbanded.
Our point is, we have less talent to pick from being a smaller school. The larger schools tend to beat the smaller schools on a regular basis, which discourages students from playing team sports like baseball, football, soccer, and basketball. They tend to play more individual sports such as track or golf. Losing six starting seniors to graduation this year had the coach and myself concerned about next year, but apparently the underclassmen have talked to other kids, and gave us good reviews, so that we should have the numbers come next year. But the league change won't take effect till the next year, so we'll most likely suffer through another year in the ECC before making the switch to the CSC, so we'll see...
A picture of our graduating 2009 seniors...
L-R: P/IF Art Scott, P/SS Tyler Gaudreau, 1B/3B Brian Gardner, CF Matt Wilson, and 2B Bryant Skopek
Anyways, I'm sitting here at work, thinking about the seniors and thought I should post something. After all it's been a while since my last post.
1 comment:
Sounds like you had a good season overall and that you had a lot of fun with the coaching, too.
Did you take the pictures for this post? They're quite good!
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