Welcome to the 2019 Potomac State Baseball Player Diary homepage. This season, Sophomores Andrew Berry (Morgantown High School / Morgantown, W.Va.), and Joel Spishock (Carmichaels High School / Carmichaels, Pa.) will take the lead on the Potomac State Baseball Player Diary. Note: Berry’s entry will be in BOLD font.
Hello Hello Catamount fans and welcome to this week’s player diaries. Good news is that it is now the last one, for the Potomac State Baseball team has advanced to the Super Regionals this coming weekend!
So, this past weekend, our team hosted the Region XX playoffs at Golden Park. The best part about it was that we got to sleep in our own beds and didn’t have to worry about traveling hours and staying in a hotel. However, there was some negatives to hosting the playoffs. The biggest one was that we oversaw all the field work. And lucky for us, Mother Nature decided to bring on the rain. It was a team effort to continually put the tarp on our field and take it off to protect it from the rain. But all of that aside, it was a great weekend at Golden Park for the team.
We kicked off the Region XX tournament this past Saturday where we faced Hagerstown Community College in the first game. On the mound we had Freshman Brandon Schaeffer who worked all seven innings of the game and struck out nine. In the game, Hayden Almond and Juwan Weaver both had multiple hits. Austin Martin, Cole Miller, Foster Conis, and Dale Houser all drove in runs. We exploded in the bottom of the 7th to enforce the run rule, giving us a victory in Game 1.
In the second game of the day, we had to bounce right back for another game against Harford Community College who was the number one seed in the tournament. The winner of this game would advance to the championship and earn an automatic bid to the super regional tournament for the following weekend. Brett Whiteman got the start for us in the second game. With a combination of walks, hits and homeruns, Harford offence was too much for us, putting up 10 runs. On the other side of things, Harford’s pitching kept our hitters off balance, only allowing us to have four hits and no runs. The final for the game was 10-0. This meant we had to play the first game the following day.
Well, like I said earlier, weather wasn’t really on our side. The rain came in and postponed our Sunday games until Monday. So, Monday morning we were back at it again, playing Hagerstown in an elimination game, winner goes to the championship, loser goes home. We jumped ahead to an early lead in the third inning 4-0. Hagerstown then cut the deficit to three runs, scoring one in the 4th. Going into the 6th inning, the score was 5-1 us. In the inning, we added six runs to enforce the run rule, getting us a 11-1 win. Colt Webb worked all six innings, struck out 12, and allowed one run, which was a solo homerun. Almond and Pete Costigan had a day at the plate, having three runs each. This meant we had punched our tickets to the District Tournament with a ¼ chance of making it to the JUCO World Series. We were all on our high horses about that, but we still had the chance to win the championship with two wins against Harford.
In our second game of the day, 4th of the tournament. This game was a real offensive duel between the teams. With multiple lead changes, we were up 8-7 going into the bottom of the 5th, when Harford’s offence added six runs making it 13-7. After that, the game got away from us, ending up with a final of 15-7. Harford claimed the Region XX Championship.
Our team had five players on the Region All-Tournament team, including Colt Webb, Pete Costigan, Juwan Weaver, Austin Chavis, and myself.
This coming weekend, we will travel to Harford for the District Tournament which is a double elimination tournament, winner advances to,” the promised land” as Coach Little calls it --Grand Junction, Colorado for the JUCO World Series. Live feed information is usually posted the day of the games on the team Twitter page if you have access to it and want to watch some of the action.
Thank you for tuning into this week's player diary! Please join in next week for updates on the team, as well as some exclusive team videos. Also, for more coverage follow the team's Twitter (@PotomacStateBB) and Instagram (@potomacstatebaseball). If you have any questions or suggestions on videos, please email me at jts0033@mix.wvu.edu.
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Welcome back Catamount Faithful to this week's edition of the Potomac State Baseball Player Diary.
As many of you probably know, finals week was last week and due to that, the semester here at Potomac State College has ended. Now, only the softball and baseball teams are the remaining students on campus while we play out our postseasons. Since we no longer must worry about the responsibilities of attending class, studying, and doing our class work we are left with tons of free time to do whatever we wish. This makes this time of year the most fun for each of us as we get to have fun playing baseball and spending time together doing fun activities. If you were to ask many current and former players, I assure you that they would say this time of year is their favorite. Not only is the competition at a higher level but we get to relax and just worry about baseball.
Since everyone else on campus is home for the summer, we get to enjoy having our team dorm, University Place all to ourselves. We do not have to worry about mandated quiet hours or other things like that. To take advantage of that, on Sunday evening a bunch of members of the team participated in a fun team dance competition on the ground floor. Teammate Nathan Kerr has a massive boombox speaker in his room and we moved it downstairs and had a fun time dancing around and just messing around with the boys. We listened to a majority of rap and dance songs that got us hyped up and ready to dance. It was like we had a concert put on just for the team on the ground floor. Not only was it a lot of fun but it was surprisingly a pretty good workout. On top of that, it got us hyped up and excited for our final games of the Region XX Tournament where we earned a bid to the Eastern District Tournament by defeating Hagerstown Community College.
After the tournament concluded on Monday, Coach Little gifted us with an off-day Tuesday to rest our bodies and get prepared for the upcoming weekend. Many players used this day of relaxation to partake in some fun activities. My diary mate, Joel Spishock has a camper located in Romney, W.Va. which is a close 30 minutes from Keyser. A couple players spent some time there going fishing and just relaxing outdoors in the beautiful weather. The location of the camper is at the Wapocoma Campground and if you have never been there, I recommend you go and visit sometime. It does a great job of showcasing some of the beauty of West Virginia since it is nestled right on the Potomac River and has the beautiful Appalachian Mountains in the distance to look at while you are either fishing, sitting next to a warm campfire, or grilling some hotdogs and hamburgers. Another teammate, Austin Martin, who is a commuter and lives in Rawlings, Md. which is only 15 minutes from campus, and another group of players went there to relax in the sun and tan. On top of that, Marty has a swimming pool at his house and that made it perfect to cool off and relax in the hot weather. In fact, it was around 80 degrees here in Keyser Tuesday, which is much nicer than the 40 degrees and super windy weather we were experiencing only two months prior.
Whenever we have free time outside of practice, we tend to try and find ways to have as much fun as possible with the great warm weather we have been able to enjoy recently. Another amazing place that we went to a couple times in the fall which we haven’t been able to make a trip to this spring is Jennings Randolph Lake which is around 15-20 minutes away. It is a beautiful little park positioned in the mountains that has a makeshift beach on the edge of the lake that is open for public access. Due to that, we like to refer to it as our beach here in Keyser which sometimes aggravates teammate Juwuan Weaver who resides from Virginia Beach and believes that it is nowhere near close in comparison to a beach. Outside of the fun, we make sure that we are getting good rest and taking care of our bodies, so we are ready and prepared for practice every day and our games which have extra importance now that we are in the postseason. A little relaxation and fun never hurt anyone though.
Just to give all of you readers an update on the diaries, Joel and I plan to continue with the diaries as long as possible, which hopefully will be all the way until we are in beautiful Colorado. It has been a blast writing and creating videos for you all which is why we want to keep doing it as long as possible.
Now, to continue my "10 Questions With…" segment. This week I decided to do 10 questions with Dylan Dunkley. Dunks is a freshman outfielder from Murfreesboro, Tenn. who attended Eagleville High School.
What is your favorite college football team?
The West Virginia Mountaineers. That is the easiest question you could ask me.
If there was a purge, what would be the first rule you break?
I would never obey our dorm’s quiet hour policy. I would disturb everyone for the fun of it.
What is your favorite song?
Every Time WeTtouch by Cascade. My man Big Chris Reyes put me on that.
What is your favorite holiday?
Christmas without a doubt.
Which player on the team is likely to be the best dad?
Peter Costigan. That’s a true dad right there.
What is your favorite movie?
The Patriot.
What is your favorite baseball memory to date?
In high school I threw out a runner at home to win the game by one run. It was even better because my girlfriend and her parents were in the stands.
If you could marry anyone in the world who would you pick?
Either Mila Kunis, Natalie Portman in her prime, or JLo in her prime. You know what… I got to go with JLo.
Since you live very far away (Tennessee), what do you miss the most about home?
I miss the constant warm weather. I love snow, but only in small portions.
Going into the district tournament this weekend, what are you most excited about?
Getting to spend time and be around my team as long as possible. Hopefully, we can continue to advance so we can elongate our time together.
That's all for this week's edition. If you have anything you would like to see in the diaries or learn more about, you can contact me through email (akb0019@mix.wvu.edu) or Twitter (@andrewberry_15). I would also encourage you to follow the team on social media. Please subscribe to our YouTube account @PotomacStateBaseball to be notified when Joel or I upload a video. Thank you for reading, and until next week, Go Catamounts!