Baseball’s Coaches Corner & All-Time Top 5
Travis Walker played 4 years on the Varsity and holds many of the Hawk Records
The ReSporter has been hurriedly trying to get with as many of the Coaches as possible as this time of the year starts to unfold with a lot of games and events going on, almost non-stop.
Catching up with Baseball Head Coach Trent Dunavant was next on our docket and The ReSporter will share the conversation next.
The ReSporter: First off, this season has to remind you of your first year as Coach in the hill country.
Coach Dunavant: “That is the exact analogy I was mentioning to Coach Bret Hodges the other day as we have more Freshman and inexperienced players than those days when we had just Sophomores and Juniors on the club and getting ready for our first season.”
The ReSporter: I was thinking that when you shared that your roster would be so young and then you add how many on last year’s team were seniors and walking across the stage.
The ReSporter: How will you approach this upcoming schedule?
Coach Dunavant: “We are really young and we have three players, Dylan Hodges, CJ Parrish, and Gavin Dietrich that played on last year’s varsity. Austin Brooks did play a little but he was more of person we would plug in here or there.”
Coach Dunavant: “We will have to rely on Dietrich a lot since he pitched for us last year and we just don’t have a lot of pitchers with experience starting this year.”
The ReSporter: Do you have any ‘diamonds in the rough’ that we can look forward to seeing?
Coach Dunavant: “Hayden Reed will give us some good outfield play and Lee Stafford is a catcher by trade but we will be able to move him as a utility middle infielder.”
The ReSporter: When you have such a young team, what part of the game would you say is the hardest to conquer?
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Coach Dunavant: “Hitting is the hardest you have to have so much muscle memory and unless they are playing throughout the season, that will be something hard for these players to master during the season…..defense does not go into a slump.”
The ReSporter: That is a good one coach, that reminded me of many of your past seniors that came into their last campaign and they just hit a mental block and could not get out of their season long slump even though they had a very productive junior year.”
Coach Dunavant: “Yes, even if they can swing a bat, they still have to pick out the right pitch to drive and that just does not happen overnight.”
The ReSporter: How will you replace a Garrett Winters?
Coach Dunavant: “That will be very difficult as he was a top young man and he always brought a great attitude to the field. Yes, his play was ideal, but his upbeat attitude will be hard to replace.”
The ReSporter: Your schedule will not be very forgiving early in the season.
Coach Dunavant: “That is something you cannot know how it will affect the team. We have gone to the Lockhart tournaments before and after playing those teams we would come home and get our game handed to us by more experienced teams. So just playing games for feeling good about yourself will not alway play dividends against teams down the road.”
Coach Dunavant: “We will have a different schedule next year since our district will be much smaller and that will give us a chance to play more non-district teams.”
The ReSporter: This year will be a season where wins and losses might not tell the whole story on how this group might play out as the next two seasons play out.
Coach Dunavant: “We will see what happens and it all feeds on having our kids play a lot….we had a good effort against Boerne and our kids will give a good effort and they are very coachable. If we can stay healthy and we know we have no depth but this will be the first time in a while we will not have any drama going on in practice.”
The ReSporter: Thanks Coach, I will assume having drama on a baseball team will sometimes play against you especially if that drama is a One Act Play. Good luck and we will hope that those one-act-plays turn into double plays.
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All-Time Top 5 batting ave. at bats runs Michael Brady .364 Travis Walker 272 Travis Walker 65 Nick Cahill .354 Garrett Winters 192 Joe Shone 37 Ross Wagliardo .338 Cody Powell 188 Corey Shedrock 36 Zach Jenkins .336 Michael Brady 184 Nick Cahill 34 Corey Shedrock .320 Logan Felch 184 Cody Powell 34 hits rbi’s extra base hits Travis Walker 80 Travis Walker 44 Travis Walker 26 Michael Brady 67 Logan Felch 43 Logan Felch 21 Daniel Camarillo 52 Michael Brady 38 Corey Shedrock 17 Jeff Nabors 49 Zach Jenkins 29 Kyler Huff 14 Logan Felch 49 Nick Cahill 27 Jeff Nabors 13 Cody Powell 27 Joe Shone 13 base on balls innings pitched strikeouts Michael Brady 48 Cody Powell 114.1 Cody Powell 128 Travis Walker 39 Ross Wagliardo 96.1 Ross Wagliardo 109 Daulton Winters 37 Logan Felch 93.2 Cody Breest 87 Kyler Huff 30 Cody Breest 79.1 Logan Felch 64 Garrett Winters 30 Nick Kissell 66.1 Jeff Nabors 56 era (15 or more innings wins Gordon McCleary 2.32 Cody Breest 11 Cody Breest 2.48 Cody Powell 7 Zach Jenkins 3.03 Ross Wagliardo 5 Cody Powell 3.62 Logan Felch 4 Travis Walker 3.98 Ryan Hutcheson 4
