Player Diary 2.21.18
Welcome to the 2018 Potomac State Baseball player diary homepage. This season, Sophomore's Mitchell Henshaw (Brockport High School / Brockport, NY), and Jeff Wong (George Washington High School / Charleston, WV) will take the lead on the Potomac State Baseball Player Diary.
Welcome back Catamount fans! This past week has been a really busy week for us, mainly because our season is underway and the grind of being a college athlete is in full effect. All though it is a lot to handle, I would not change for anything in the world. I love being able to play baseball at this level. Juggling your classwork and baseball is all a part of the grind but fortunately we have some great coaches here who not only teach us about baseball but prepare us for the real world. The coaches are always talking about time management and making sure we give ourselves enough time to do our school work on top of baseball and everything else going on. With the season underway, this is going to be crucial for each player. This past weekend we traveled down to Florence, South Carolina to open up our season. We left Friday at 8:30AM. With that meant missing class all day Friday. We had to make sure to get all our work from our professors so we can work on it on the 9-hour bus ride down, all part of the fun.
One of my favorite things about traveling on weekends, other than playing baseball, is being with the guys. The bus ride, team dinners, staying in hotels are always great times. How our road trips typically work, is that the sophomores get priority and get a seat to themselves. This year we have a bigger team, and quite a few sophomores and not everyone is able to sit alone. On the ride down, I was lucky enough to sit next to a great teammate and friend, first baseman Joel Spishock (Carmichaels, PA/ Carmichaels Area). Joel is a big boy who could probably eat me for breakfast, but to my benefit he did not spread out and take a nap so we had a comfortable ride down.
Once we made it to Florence, SC we checked into our hotel. We are each assigned to a room with 3 other teammates, so a total of four to a room. I was roomed with fellow sophomores Hunter Haddix (Bridgeport, WV/ Bridgeport), Ryan Roell (Pittsburgh, PA/ Keystone Oaks), and freshman Abe Stearns (Leon, WV/ Point Pleasant). We get to our room and there are two beds, and a pull-out bed. Haddix called the pull-out bed before I even walked into the room. That left the two beds. Abe was nice enough to let Ryan and I get our own beds, and he slept on the floor, what a guy. Yes, I gave him some pillows and a blanket to get a little comfortable.
After we all got situated in the hotel, we got back on the bus to head to dinner. Coach
Little gave us a treat that night, he took us out to Olive Garden. To anyone who has not been to Olive Garden, I'll tell you why this is great. Not only is the food fantastic, you also get unlimited breadsticks and salad. I was sitting with Jake Callaway (Belle Vernon, PA/ Belle Vernon Area) and Joel Spishock. The three of us went through six baskets of breadsticks alone, and there are six breadsticks in each basket, so you know we took full advantage of that and cleared out all the breadsticks Olive Garden had in stock that night. We were just making sure we had enough carbs in us for four games this weekend!
All those things are fun in all, but the real reason we head down south is to play ball. We like to have a little fun amongst ourselves, but we all know that this is a business trip. We do not go down there to mess around. We finished this weekend 2-2. It was not exactly what we wanted, both games we lost were both very winnable games for us. But that is how baseball goes, everything cannot always go your way. We just have to work even harder and go down next weekend and execute even more. The highlight of the weekend was in our first game of the weekend against Patrick Henry Community College. We were in a nail bitter. It was extra innings, and Zach Musgrove (Grafton, WV/ Grafton) stepped up to the plate. Musky gets a hanging slider, and he knew exactly what to do with it. When I say he smoked this ball, I really mean it. I do not think this ball has landed yet. As soon as we all heard it, we started running towards home plate to congratulate Musky. A walk-off home-run was an awesome way to start the weekend and the season!
I put together a video from this past weekend so all you fans can get an inside look at what we go through on these trips. I encourage you guys to watch it.
That will be it for this week's edition. Make sure to check in next week as we travel down to South Carolina again! Feel free to follow the team on Twitter @PotomacStateBB and Instagram @potomacstatebaseball. You can also follow me on Twitter @mhenshaw4 for some exclusive coverage of the team. If you have any questions or comments about the player diaries you can email me at mjh0025@mix.wvu.edu. Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it.
Catamount fans! Welcome back for this week’s Potomac State Player Diary. This past weekend, our spring season kicked off in Florence, South Carolina, where we split our first four games, returning home to Keyser with a 2-2 record. Leading the season off with a great day at the plate, Zach Musgrove ended our first game of the season, an extra inning contest, with a solo home run to left center field. The win really set the tone for the weekend and for the entire season to come.
Transitioning into regular season comes very abruptly, giving student-athletes very little times to adjust to the new demands of their respective season. Once season begins, missed classes are inevitable. Extra work and attention is required to make up for the time absent, so a strong line of communication between the athlete and their professor is necessary. Thankfully, the professors here at Potomac State College are more than willing to work with student athletes when a game takes them away from class. Whether it be a missed test or just a few notes, our professors, contingent on our effort, make sure that we are not behind on classwork. Having such understanding professors helps ease the strain of trying to balance time during the season.
Academics can too easily take a back seat to baseball, but it is our job to find a way to balance our time between our grades and performance on the field. Free time is hard to come by, and most of it is spent on the bus, which our freshman got their first taste of this past weekend. We got back from South Carolina in the early hours of Monday morning after an eight-hour bus trip, which was after a double header; none of us 35 had gotten to shower yet. You can imagine how bad we all wanted off. The next morning comes very soon, as most of us have class at 8:30 AM.
The spring season is filled with long bus rides and short turnarounds, making the semester seem like it flies by. With the semester and classes moving so fast, it is our job as student athletes to make sure we aren’t falling behind. One must have an internal switch that can be flipped between being a student and being an athlete, being able to flip either side on when our schedule requires it. This is much easier said, than done.
“The hardest part about the regular season is definitely maintaining grades. It is hard to be playing so many games while keeping up attendance and staying up to date with work. You have to be able to work with your professors and see them on out-of-class time or there is no way you can have good grades,” I was told by Sophomore Left-Handed pitcher, Josh Zeboskey. I asked Josh what the hardest thing about season is. A lot of people may think that student-athletes get special care or attention during the season, due to us missing so many classes; but this is not the case at all. Yes, professors help us if we ask for it, especially the great staff at Potomac State College. However, the help is only there if we put forth the effort to make up what we miss and keep a strong line of communication with the professor.
The grind that is spring season is only a ‘grind’ if you let it be. A disciplined routine of sleep, good diet and studying must be put in place and maintained in order to be effective on the field and in the classroom. Us Catamounts work very hard to ensure that we do not have to stress about classes. Our goal is that, when we flip that switch from student to athlete, we can do so absolutely.
As we gear up to head south to South Carolina for the second weekend in a row, we are practicing hard and studying even harder, with midterms coming up very soon. We have four more games this weekend, two of which are against a top 5 team in the country. It is easy to focus on our upcoming opponents more so than our school work, but, with the strong ‘switch’ that has been installed by our coaches, the PSC Baseball Team is ready for season ahead.