Week One!

The first week of the season is now complete! The Indians went 2-1 with wins over Barton (by a score of 8-7) and Brevard (score of 12-4), and a loss to Tusculum (score of 7-3).

Opening day was on Tuesday, February 1^st at Barton.  There was loads of excitement throughout the team as we were all ready to see a different jersey on the other side of the field.  The constant saying throughout the players was, “it’s game day…let’s go!”

One of the unnoticed stars of the game was catcher, Greg Lawson.  Projected starting catcher, Josh Hohn, was too sick to make the trip leaving the starting job in the lap of Lawson.  

The catcher is one of the most important positions on the field.  Having this responsibility thrust onto your shoulders the day of the game can be difficult but Greg did a great job.  He handled the pitching staff very well and even in the midst of some struggles, was able to maintain composure and get the pitchers on the track they needed.

I was extremely impressed with the job Greg did in an unexpected role.  He proved he is ready to step up at any point he may be needed.

A second player who went unnoticed was first baseman, Austin Moyer.  He reached base in four out of five plate appearances due to incredible discipline at the plate.  Moyer walked four times in his first game as an Indian!  

One of the keys to having a good at-bat is seeing a lot of pitches and forcing the pitcher to work hard to get you out.  Moyer did an incredible job of forcing the Barton pitchers to throw a lot of pitches and provide opportunities for sluggers Garrett Furr and John Neese to hit with runners on base.

Game one of the season was entirely a team effort to sneak out a win and Lawson and Moyer were two unsung heroes.

The second game of the season took place on Sunday, February 6 at 1 p.m.  This game was at Catawba and a part of the Preseason South Atlantic Conference Tournament.  The weekend’s games were supposed to be held in Kannapolis at the Intimidator’s stadium but due to much rain they were relocated.

The first shout-out for this weekend goes to the entire team for getting our field (The Reservation as we like to call it) ready to be played on.  We arrived at nine o’ clock on Saturday morning and outside of a short breakfast break, worked on the field until three o’ clock to remove as much water as possible.

Were it not for the manual labor put in by our players there would have been no games played this past weekend.

Playing Tusculum, an in-conference rival, we really wanted to play well.  Unfortunately we did not perform as well as we would have liked, but there were some very positive things taken from the game. 

Third baseman, Chris Dula, had never played third base until January of this season.  It has been a process of getting adjusted to a new position and he showed in that game he is ready for the challenge.  

It was becoming late in the game and a screaming ground ball was hit in Chris’ direction with the bases loaded and one out.  He fielded smoothly and delivered a rocket throw to second where Julio Zubillaga relayed the throw to first for the double play.

This was an enormous play and kept us in the game with a legitimate chance to win.  This play was a very positive sign for Dula’s future as a third baseman.

Baseball is a game which weighs heavily on confidence.  Having struggled offensively through the first two games, there was not much confidence in the dugout. 

The first eight innings of the game against Brevard had the same feel.  The team as a whole was simply not swinging the bat well and we were headed in the direction of our second loss on the day.

Something changed in that ninth inning, however. A couple of guys reached base and Cameron White drove them in with a two-run double into right-center field.  Following that hit, I saw smiles on a lot of players’ faces during a game for the first time all season.

As the saying goes, hitting is definitely contagious.  We then erupted for nine runs in the ninth.  I firmly believe that once people started smiling and having a little fun, and once the confidence level rose following White’s double, we turned into a different team for that last inning.

We are a very young team this year and some growing pains are to be expected.  With that being said, it was a very good first week of the season and there were a lot of players contributing to win two of our first three games.