Welcome to the 2024 Potomac State Baseball player diary homepage. This season, Sophomores Ben McDougal (Bridgeport High School / Bridgeport, WV), and Kris Sutton (Cobb County High School / Calhoun, GA) will take the lead on the Potomac State Baseball Player Diary.
Hello, Catamount fans, and welcome back to this week’s edition of the Potomac State Baseball Player Diary! 4 days. 4 nights. That is how long we have until the team heads down to Sumter, SC to open our long-awaited season. Opening day is special at all levels of baseball and no different for us. We have spent months preparing just to have the opportunity to play game that count. The excitement level is off the charts for all our guys, especially freshmen who have yet to really experience what college baseball is all about.
To start off this week we had a nice surprise when each hitter received their new bat for the spring. Since 2005, Potomac State Baseball has had an apparel and equipment contract with Rawlings Sporting Goods. It is huge to have such a contract and not many JUCO’s have such a great deal. Rawlings hooks us up with bags, batting gloves, catcher’s gear, a ton of apparel and finally: bats. This past fall our Rawlings rep Adam Heinke and our BSN Sports rep Dave Rogers set us up with a bat testing day. It was a little different this year as for the first time we had the choice of choosing a Rawlings bat or an Easton bat. In 2020 Rawlings Sporting Goods acquired Easton Diamond Sports to form a baseball equipment powerhouse. This season we were given the choice, and the hitters were right down the middle when choosing Rawlings or Easton. A huge shout-out to Rawlings for continuing to support us with the hottest bats on the market.
Each week during the spring season the hitters have an evening meeting with Coach Schafer. The sessions are in a classroom setting and last about an hour. There is a ton of information packed into that hour as Coach Schafer presents a PowerPoint presentation, with videos, teaching points and the philosophy of hitting. It is next level stuff. The coaches at Potomac State do everything they can to prepare us for gameday. They also prepare us for life.
This week also saw us all turn into fans as the NCAA Division 1 schedule opened up. With our ESPN+ accounts we tuned into every game we could.
Potomac State Baseball currently has 13 players playing at the NCAA DI level.
Graham Brown & Alexander Meckley (Coastal Carolina), Tyler Henshaw, Jake Arnold, & Dakota Miller (Charleston Southern), Brady Whitacre & Zack Whitacre (Radford), Diego Barrett (North Carolina A&T), Noah Farrar (Marshall), Morgan Little (St. Bonaventure), Chance Satcho (Delaware State), Anthony Swenda (UMBC), and Avery Heiple (Towson).
Xander Meckley started Saturday against Indiana topping 97mph with 6 strikeouts in his first outing! Huge shout-out for Dakota Miller with the first homerun for Charleston Southern. Diego Barrett had an amazing outing on the mound showing off his nasty slider. And lastly Graham Brown with an amazing diving play in right field.
As for the Day in the Life for this week, enter Aidan VanRider. Aidan is from the town of New Smyrna Beach, in sunny Florida. It is known as the “Shark bite capital in the US”. Aidan will continue to play baseball next season at Notre Dame College.
The first thing to note about him is that we rarely call him Aidan. Maybe it is a baseball thing, but players are rarely called by their real name. For Aidan, we always just call him “Rider”. Aidan starts his day off like every college student starting with class. Luckily for us at Potomac State, you can roll out of bed at 8:55 a.m. and be at a 9 o’clock class. The small campus really lends itself to doing well academically. We have support staff that is available, and the professors really care about the education you receive. You can really see the passion and dedication of the faculty. They are the best!
On this day Rider and Caden Goodwin (“Goody”) go to Wayne’s County Meat Market in Keyser to get some steaks. Now these are not just any steaks, these are Wayne’s steaks. You know how every Christmas there are commercials for Omaha Steaks? Well, this place could give them a run for the money. They prepare the meat right there, so it is always fresh and tastes incredible. Wayne’s is just another example of the hometown pride felt in Keyser, WV. To prepare the steaks, Rider sets up his next level chef skills right in the clubhouse. Is a charcoal grill the next addition to Golden Park??
Thank you to everyone for taking the time to catch up with us on this week’s Potomac State Baseball Player Diary and make sure to check out the video below.