Player Diary 3.21.18
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. Note: Wong's entry will be in bold font.
What's going on Catamount fans, welcome to another edition of the Potomac State Baseball player diary. After our four-game sweep last weekend against Corning Community College, the coaches thought it would be pretty fun to have our own kind of March Madness. After our practice on Wednesday, the coaches but together a bracket for a golf-putting competition between the hitters. It was a nice way to end a hardworking practice. You see, we hit a ton. I mean a lot of hitting. And while we all love it and live for it, it can become monotonous at times. So the coaches do a great job of mixing it up, and keeping us fresh by creating situations to get us boost when needed.
How this version of March Madness worked was that Coach Schafer would put a small cone anywhere on the gym floor, and whoever had the closest putt to the cone, would win that round. It was a very intense tournament for us. It is amazing the level of competitiveness that we all have, even for meaningless activities like putting a gold ball on the gym floor. But I mean no one wanted to walk out of Lough Gymnasium that day a loser, but for pretty much all of us except one, that is how it was. Please watch this video on our version of March Madness.
This past weekend, we finished spring break with a three-game series against St. Clair County Community College out of Michigan. On Friday, we took game one 9-1. Sophomore Zach Musgrove continued his hot streak by hitting his 7thhome-run of the year. Our pitchers were solid as Tanner Skidmore, Brandon Schamp and Chase Weihl combined on the win. It was a great team effort to open the series. I can’t say enough about this team. I know all teams claim to be a brotherhood, but this team really does have that feel. There is a commitment to each other to work hard and continue to improve on a daily basis. I am proud to be a part of it.
Game two would be a nail bitter that we won 9-8. It was not quite the way we wanted to win, but we did have to rally back in order to win. We made a few too many errors in the field costing us runs. But we ended up with win, so we will take it however we can. Good teams have to find ways to win even when they do not play their best. Hats off to Josh Zoboskey for a gutty three-inning relief effort that lifted us to the win.
Game three was one for the books. Freshman Juwuan Weaver and sophomore Dom Peroni hit back-to-back home-runs in the first inning, giving us a 4-0 lead after one. That was enough for starting pitcher Brett Whiteman. "Whitey" had his stuff working on Sunday. He completed the game giving up only 1 hit and striking out 10, improving his record to 3-1 on the year.
Whitey has become a solid part of our pitching staff. Our pitchers have put in so much work and are constantly pushing each other to get better every day. It is a committed group. There are some returning guys who set the tone and show the young guys the way we do things. Veterans like Jeff Wong, Tanner Skidmore, Tyler Shorter, Josh Zeboskey and Hunter Haddix are the core of that staff. They have an attention to detail that permeates throughout the entire staff. They are all examples of what hard work can do. When you combine that with the younger guys like Whiteman, Colt Webb, Schamp and Weihl “buying in” it makes for a solid staff.
Monday marked the first day of classes back from Spring Break. It was not enjoyable getting up to go to class that morning. I had gotten accustomed to not setting an alarm. What helped me get through the day was knowing that the forecast was for a massive snow storm, and boy did we get one. Late Monday night the snow started to come down. I was woken early Tuesday morning up by a phone call from the College saying that all classes were cancelled, and I could not have been more thrilled. No classes throughout the day seemed like a longer extension of spring break.
We would head into the gym at 5pm for practice. The hitters would spend the majority of our time hitting. We set up many stations in the gym, and we get after it. After all of our hitting was done, it was time for conditioning. Typically, this is not an enjoyable part of practice, but this time Coach Little made it entertaining for us. We split up into two groups, one in each corner of the gym. Coach Little and Coach Kesecker were the quarterbacks, and we were the wide receivers running routes. It is always fun to see the athleticism on the team during little drills like this. Running routes was a fun way to end practice, and our snow day.
That will be it for this week's edition. Make sure to check in each week to catch up on all of our games, and to see what the team is doing. 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.
Welcome back Catamount Faithful! This week we are taking a look into the life of Sophomore Pitcher, Josh Zeboskey. I had the privilege of getting to follow Josh around for a couple days and, I have to say, there was not a dull moment. Josh is full of energy and knows how to channel that energy in various settings, and also knows how to let that energy loose (as you will see). Give the video a view and enjoy! Come back next week to see how we deal with the winter weather here in Keyser, WV.