Player Diary 3.6.18
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.
Welcome to another edition of the Potomac State Baseball's Player Diary. Another week is in the books here in Keyser, and this past week was just as productive as the others. The coaches had some fun with us on Friday as we played the annual Potomac State Baseball's floor hockey game. Before practice Coach Little had all the catchers meet in his office. Us four catchers were the captains of each team. We each drafted our own team, and it was a good time to see which players were flying off the draft board in the early rounds.
My first-round draft pick was right-handed pitcher Tanner Skidmore (Timberville, VA/Boadway). I wanted to go with some size so, getting "Skiddy" was a huge addition to my team. Skiddy stands 6'5'' and weighs in at about 225 lbs, it is safe to say I got the big enforcer I wanted. After the teams were settled, we all played each other in Lough Gymnasium. It was a round robin tournament, and the best two teams at the end would match up in the championship. Unfortunately, my team did not make it to the championship. I was stuck in net the whole time so I could not go out there and score some goals for the team. I guess it is only fair to keep the only former hockey player on the time in net. I still enjoyed watching everyone else try to play.
After the championship, we all got a nice surprise by watching the coaches play against a couple of our players. It was funny to see the coaches out there playing with a competitive edge. Coach Schafer's 12-year goal scoring streak was snapped on Friday night. Sophomore catcher Tanner Lambert (Morgantown, WV/East Fairmont) was in net, and stopped just about every single shot thrown at him. He was the MVP of the night and was fun to watch, that's for sure.
Due to the weather, our game on Saturday was moved to Sunday, and we would have a double header against Eastern Gateway Community College. Because of the storm we got, Saturday was more of maintenance day for us. We showed up to Golden Park at 1pm to take the tarp off the field so it had enough time to dry out in time by Sunday. Before taking to tarp off, Coach Little gave us a humorous pre-tarp duty speech. We were experiencing high winds that day, and Coach wanted to make sure we had everything under control. He was telling us that he has seen many people get thrown up in the hair from the tarp when the wind picks up. I can remember him saying "If a big gust of wind comes in, just grab the strap and hold on to that sucker". Fortunately for us, no one was flung in the air by the tarp this time. Hopefully mother nature stays on our side and does not give us any injuries from tarp duty.
Sunday was opening day at Golden Park! We faced Eastern Gateway in a two-game series. This was their first baseball game in program history. With that being said, we knew they were going to be ready to play so we had to be bring our best effort. We started off both games a little slow. It was definitely cold outside, but that is no excuse to not be playing up to expectations. The bats came alive in 2nd inning by scoring 9 runs. That was enough run support for Tanner Skidmore on the mound. Skiddy struck out 12 in the first game. We ended up 10- run ruling them, so we only played 5 innings. Final score of game one was 13-3. Game two was not exactly the same as game one. We started off slow and did not get our first run until the 4th inning where Zach Musgrove (Grafton, WV/Grafton) hit a 3-run home-run to take the lead 3-2. We took that lead until the 6th inning where we scored 9 runs. That made it a 12-2 final. As Coach Schafer always says, "It’s hard to get two wins in one day". So, with that we will take them any way we can.
I made a video from this past weekend about our double-header if you guys could check it out!
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 fans! This weeks Potomac State Player Diary gives a look into a timed tradition here at Potomac State: Hockey Night. Early in the day, the 4 catchers of the team draft teams of 9 to compete against one another in floor hockey. Floor hockey is a good cardio workout, on top of being a fun competition which builds team chemistry. The night of hockey gave us a much needed breath from the rigor of season.
Coming off a Sunday sweep of Eastern Gateway Community College, we head into our first week of mid-week games in addition to those on the weekend. We travel to Glenville State College on Thursday for a double header against the Pioneers followed by a pair of double headers with Corning Community College at Golden Park.
Watch the following video for a a player’s view of Hockey Night in Keyser!