Player Diary 5.2.18
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 back Catamount fans to the newest edition of the Potomac State Baseball's player diary! It is a very busy time for the Catamounts right now. Classes are currently over and finals are the only thing left at this point. With that being said, there is a lot of studying happening right now. We have had Monday and Tuesday off from baseball so we can just focus all our attention on finals. This has been a tremendous help. Although studying can get very tedious, it must get done. The correlation between school and baseball is very similar. In baseball we practice just about every day in hopes that when games come along, we get a win. You cannot get wins on the field if you are not prepared and working hard for it. It is the same mentality for us in the classroom, nothing changes. If you do not study for your tests, you will not do good because you are not prepared. You must always have a game plan and prepare yourself the best you can.
We are held to high standards and are expected to do very well in the classroom. It is very easy to come to college as an athlete and not worry about school, but you will never make it in the real world. Our coaching staff does a great job making sure our heads are screwed on right in the classroom. They are continently talking to each player about their grades, and how they can improve or maintain A's. Us players have done an incredible job in the classroom thus far and the main reason for this is preparation. Balancing school and baseball is a difficult task, but nothing this team cannot handle.
With all this studying going on, you need to have a little break every once and awhile to get your mind off school. On Monday night, many members of the team went down to the turf field and played a big whiffle ball game. The weather was finally nice enough to get out and enjoy. It was just like we were all kids again playing whiffle ball in our backyards. You know with all these kids playing though, there is going to be a ton of competitive energy going around. For this doubleheader on the turf, the freshman and sophomores squared off against each other. The sophomores took it easy on the freshman the first game as they walked away taking game 1, Game 2 would be a different story. The sophomores came out swinging. The newest signee to the PSBWBL (Potomac State Baseball Whiffle Ball League) was Belgium standout Joakim Svedhem. Joakim shined under the lights for the sophomores belting a few home runs to tie up the series at one a piece. The rubber match will be held after finals week.
I would like to give a shout out to a big part of our baseball program: Raymond Burner. Mr. Burner is the photographer for the school. He is constantly at our baseball games taking pictures of us. He uploads thousands to the College’s Flickr account that are available for anyone to upload the photos for free. It does not matter whether it is home or on the road, he will do his best to get there. It is a huge help for the program to have pictures of us players, and as players we thoroughly enjoy looking at them and sharing them! We are extremely fortunate to have him around and cannot thank him enough.
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| Henshaw (left) and Wong pose with Raymond Burner (center) |
That will be it for this week's edition. Make sure to check in each week to catch up on all 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, for another week of the Potomac State Baseball Player Diary. We near the end of the school year this week, as it is finals week. The tight schedule of studying and taking exams marks the end of a semester, and the start of the post season. The regular season has had its ups and downs: ranging from playing in near perfect baseball weather, to week long rain delays. With our last game at Golden Park of the year taking place today, Wednesday the 2nd, we only have one more game until the post season starts. Teams are seeded based on regular season in-region records, and then records are wiped to 0-0.
Our regular season record does carry into the playoffs beyond the seeding stage. The first step on the road to Grand Junction is the Region XX (20) tournament, which will be held next week at Harford Community College in Maryland. Region XX is made up of 4 teams: Harford CC, Chesapeake College, Hagerstown CC, and Potomac State. The 4 teams play it out in a double elimination tournament, sending the winner on to the next and final stage before going to Colorado: the District Tournament, which will be held by the winner of Region 15 in New York. Winners from Regions 20, 15, and 10 play to see who advances to the Junior College World Series.
The post season is where all our hard work and hard played games reaches a pinnacle. A team can go undefeated in the regular season, but still has the ability to win out in the post season and win a championship, and vice versa. The mindset and attitude of the team as a whole has to be ‘strictly business’. Classes are finished and out of the way, the weather is turning nice, and friends are already on summer break. College baseball players do not get the luxury of hitting the relax button just yet. This time of year is often the most stressful for baseball players. While the regular college kids kick their feet up and start the summer, we have to remain focused on the task at hand and must be hungry to go get it.
This Catamount team has weathered several storms throughout the school year and baseball season. A lot of post season games come down to the final innings in close, heated competition, but I think we have played in enough big games with big atmospheres to be more than prepared for what is to come. The 2018 Catamount Baseball team is quietly poised for a deep run into the post season, and it begins next week.