Badin vs. Fredericktown
Miamisburg graduation 2012
Valley View vs. Greenville
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Thursday, March 26, 2009
Prep baseball season gets underway Monday
Most seasons, high school baseball teams might get to dirty their cleats a handful of times before the real games begin. The players spend so much time in the gym during the preseason, they would be better off working on their free-throw shooting than base-running skills.
That’s what makes this March’s weather stand out. Teams have gotten outside and stayed outside (the last two soggy days excluded), and they should be sharper than normal when the season begins Monday, March 30.
One team that should really benefit from the extra time outdoors is Greenon, which has a smaller gym than most to practice in when the weather is bad.
“We’re not even able to throw 90 feet (in the gym),” fourth-year coach Lonnie Robinson said. “That hurts us sometimes.”
Next week, we should find out just how much the dry weather has helped the area teams. The News-Sun’s baseball preview runs Monday, but here are 10 things to know about the 2009 season:
Kenton Ridge has a strong No. 1 pitcher in sophomore Luke Mamer, but it graduated its top four run producers. The Cougars had big question marks entering last season and still made the state final four for the second straight season (the first Clark County team to ever make it twice in a row in baseball), so expect the team to be solid again this year.
The new Springfield High School team has the potential to be the top boys team in the first year of the new high school. It will field a lineup with a good mix of North and South talent, such as sophomore slugger Jimmy Powell and three-sport standout Zack Burks.
In the Ohio Heritage Conference, you can always count on West Liberty-Salem, which is seeking its eighth straight 20-win season. Pitcher Tyler Hayes (1.67 ERA in 2008) will try to lead the team to its second straight league title. Don’t count out a Triad team that could start as many as seven sophomore, or Southeastern, which won a sectional title a year ago.
There are new coaches at Springfield (Rob Cassell), Shawnee (Andy DeWitt), Yellow Springs (Ted Donnell) and Tecumseh (Roger Culbertson, who was last the Arrows baseball coach in 2003).
Emmanuel Christian is not fielding a team this year because it didn’t have enough players.
The race for Springfield News-Sun All-Area Player of the Year is wide open. It could be any of the following guys (or someone else entirely): Kyle Stephenson of Northwestern; Robbie Holt of Shawnee; Burks and Powell of Springfield; Mamer of Kenton Ridge; Ethan Price of Mechanicsburg; Austin Dixon and Ethan James of Triad; Lance Steiner of Greenon; and Seth Rogers of Graham.
Mechanicsburg finally has a field of its own at the high school.
Triad coach Will Nichols is five wins away from his 200th career victory.
The area is well represented on the college scene with Division I players at Georgia (Shawnee’s Jason Leaver), Miami University (Kenton Ridge’s Adam Eaton), Bowling Green (Graham’s Ryan Schlater) and Wright State (Urbana’s Kyle Mossbarger and Kenton Ridge’s Tyler Heskett).
The resignation of Mark Stoll (the longtime North coach who’s now AD at Springfield) means Southeastern’s Rick Woods has the longest tenure in the area at 23 seasons. Northeastern’s Chris Kitchen enters his 20th season this year.
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A perfect bracket (through two rounds)
Here at the News-Sun, we love the NCAA March Madness bracket pool. It’s a tradition that allows us to display our basketball knowledge, grab some bragging rights and give us a reason to hoop and holler when Cal-State Northridge looks like they might upset Memphis.
Right now, the clubhouse leaders are former SNS reporter/copy editor Steve Schlather and Mr. Community News himself Tom Stafford. My little brother Tyler (who turned 16 today, Happy Birthday) is in third.
But no one at the News-Sun has a perfect bracket through two rounds. One Facebook user, Missouri University student Hank Sherman, picked EVERY game correctly.
It’s a bracket all of us at the News-Sun wish we had.
Here’s Sherman’s basis for the picks, according to his Facebook Bracket Brag:
Went with my gut reaction for most of the picks. Do I really think Missouri will win it all? Maybe. If they go to the championship game I hope someone can hook me up w/some free tickets. I dig the heated discussion. I think the Tigers of Mizzou can and will win this if they just keep ON it!
He’s got Mizzou, UNC, Duke and Louisville in the Final Four.
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On this date in area sports history …
Seventy two years ago on this date, March 26, 1937, NBA Hall of Famer and Tecumseh High School graduate Wayne Embry was born in Springfield.
Embry biography from NBA Hall of Fame.
Embry is now an executive with the Toronto Raptors.
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