now have the confidence and experience of “being there”. The nerves have long
gone and every game is just another ball game to them.”
Coming Into the Season “Check List”
It would be easy for Hinds to look at their success from last year and say “Let’s do
what we did last year.” And why not, they have most of their starters back from last
year’s championship team. But that’s not the case. Rives: “First was to get off to a
better start. Then win our conference. Even though we won the Regionals last year
and played in the World Series championship game, we lost in our state tournament
to a good Jones County team. That’s motivation for our retuning guys. As great as
the season was - especially the last three weeks of the season – we still lost the
state championship game.
This year they are taking
each part of the season bit
by bit. Start by winning the
South Division first then
winning the state
championship. I know it
sounds like a coaching
cliché but we are taking the
small steps and focusing on
winning the next game.
Stop looking too much at
the big picture and focus on
the day-to-day…winning the
next game.”
Returning Players Stepping Up
When teams lose players, coaches anticipate returning experienced players fill those
openings. Hinds has a couple of them. Rives: “We have a few players that have
stepped up but I think the one player who has stepped up the most has been our
catcher Jonathan Washam. He’s gained so much confidence at the plate. Last year
we had a bit of a platoon system with him and our sophomore catcher. Johnathan
as a freshman seemed to have pressed a little bit feeling that he had to prove
himself when he got in the game. This year when he’s not behind the plate he’s our
DH so he’s getting more AB’s too. He’s more confident and not trying to “prove”
himself. For pitching it would be Graham Ahlrich. Graham was a redshirt for us
last year. He was with us all the time, traveled with us took pre-game but of course
never played. He came to us as a first baseman and had a very strong arm and we
saw that strong arm. He really didn’t have much of an opportunity to pitch in high
school, but once he got that opportunity to pitch here he just continued to get better
and better. Now he’s a pitcher only. He’s got a very good slider and been extremely
valuable for us out of the bull pen.