Welcome back Catamount fans and thank you for tuning into another entry of the Potomac State Baseball player diary. As you may recall your 2020 boys stationed here in Keyser have found a strong liking for playing poker, but as the days have passed some of our teammates have found interest in some new hobbies.  

Let me share with you a few.

Dylan Dunkley was born and raised down south in Murfreesboro, Tennessee right outside of Nashville, America’s home of country music. While Dylan grew up with a passion for baseball he was also “Raised on country.” Dylan’s father, Big Dave Dunkley, even toured with Tim McGraw as a member of his band as a percussionist for several years. Needless to say, Dunks brought his musical and country influence with him to Keyser and it has rubbed off on a couple of Catamounts. Justin Stone bought a guitar a while back to join Dunks in some jam sessions, but most recently Brandon Schaeffer has been convinced and persuaded to purchase a guitar of his own. When the poker chips aren’t hitting the table the group of musicians are filling the ground floor of University Place with the sweet sound of acoustic music. The members have decided to name their musical trio “Carl” (It’s an inside joke- I can’t share everything with you) and their latest project has been attacking the chords of Luke Combs’s latest album, What You See Is What You Get. To give you a taste of their progress I stumbled upon Brandon strumming a couple chords a few days back and I was actually able to guess what song he was trying to play. It was Beautiful Crazy by Luke Combs.

Besides music, one of the more popular passions for Catamounts past and current is fishing.  The Keyser and surrounding areas are honestly home to some of the best fishing in the east coast.  The past week has brought some stretches of nice weather and some of the boys on the team have found enough time to attend some local fishing holes for recreational sport. Trevor Thomas, Colton Matthews, Bryce Turner, Easton Pettit, and Jonah Clement compose the usual crew of fishermen and they head up the Keyser mountains to Barnum, which was described to me as a, “Little runoff spillway.” They use power bait and spinners to fish for rainbow and brown trout.

While the objective is obviously to catch the fish, the crew started off with catching a couple branches across the stream and then proceeded to move on to getting each other’s lines tangled up. Bryce had a couple lucky bites on some brown trout, but lost them while he was trying to reel them in. In fishing, patience seems to be the name of the game and after several hours at it, Easton was the only one to finally reel in a prized rainbow trout.

The stretches of nice weather this past week were also accompanied by periods of rain. Here at Potomac State, Rain + Practice = Tarp Duty. Even though we were back in Keyser for only a handful of days between road trips we found enough opportunities for tarp duty that felt like the equivalent to the number of tarp duties all of last season. In total we had six tarp duties Monday through Thursday, once on Monday, twice on Tuesday, two more on Wednesday, and a final blowout for the week Thursday night before our travel day on Friday. I understand that I haven’t been a member of the program long, but multiple tarp duties in one day felt like a unique experience. After we tarped the field on Monday the weather allowed us to have an inner squad on the field for practice on Tuesday, so we had to take the tarp back off. As we were taking our pregame round of infield/outfield, rain began to fall from the skies again and just as we were finishing our warmups Coach Little decided it was time to put the tarp back on the field. We were about halfway through the process of re-tarping the field when the baseball gods decided that they did want us to play that day and the rain stopped and we rolled the tarp back of the field. After we got our work in for the day, we simply pushed the tarp back out onto the field. We were all thrilled to take advantage of the outside practice time last week, so I guess the vicious cycle of tarp duty is a fair price to pay.

All the poker, country music, fishing, and practice aside you know it would not be long before we had to pay another visit to our beloved Grammie who was kind enough to prepare another homecooked meal for us. After practice on Wednesday Zack Whitacre and I went along with Graham Brown to his grandmother’s house for dinner. Grammie prepared another delicious meal for us that included meatloaf stuffed peppers, sweet potatoes, Italian sausages, steamed broccoli, scalloped potatoes, fresh sweat tea, and homemade chocolate pudding for dessert.  So many thank you’s go out to her.

Friday eventually came and brought with it another travel day. Travel day got off to another early start for Dylan Dunkley, Justin Stone, Jake Ours, and I as we headed down to the local Denny’s restaurant at 6:30am. The popular item for the table was the “Build your own slam” where you get to pick any combination of four of Denny’s breakfast options. After we downed the breakfast, we all shuffled over to the clubhouse to meet up with the rest of the team and we prepared to load the bus. We had the same hip-hop loving driver as last week, but we did not get the opportunity to hear any more of his favorites. The first portion of the drive consisted of the usual catching up on sleep, but after we made our first stop somewhere in Virginia it was movie time. This week’s movie selection diverted away from last week’s western theme as Coach Little and Coach Kowalo threw it back to ancient times with the film Gladiator. After Gladiator had finished playing it was time for the last stop of the drive down. We stopped somewhere in North Carolina at a Pilot gas station where Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and donuts were the popular snacking items. After a few more hours on the road we finally arrived in Florence, South Carolina. Once we arrived at our hotel, we were given our room assignments and I was pleased to find out that I was posted up with (K)evan again. We also bunked with Jonah Clement, but with two beds and a pullout couch everyone got their own sleeping space this time around. We all got settled in and shipped back out for a team dinner at Ruby Tuesdays. Don’t worry mom, this time transportation was provided for us aboard the team bus. After our meal we headed over to take a look at the field at Florence-Darlington Tech where Coach Kowalo gave us a quick rundown of scouting reports for our competition throughout the weekend.

Saturday morning soon came around and it was finally game day again. After we all woke up, we had breakfast in the lobby and headed over to the field around 8:30am for our 10:00am game. We ended up dropping the first game against Florence-Darlington but came back with our first win of the season against Monroe. Coach Little was happy with how we were able to bounce back with our backs against the wall and get the program’s first win against Monroe in a couple of years.

After Saturday’s games we headed back to the hotel and got ready for another team dinner. This time we boarded the bus and headed over to Fatz Café. They stack the burgers high over at Fatz and most of the team took advantage of it and ordered some burgers that had up to four patties on them. Leaving Fatz Café was the interesting part though. As the team was headed out a girl scout cookie stand caught Dunkley’s eyes and he decided it would be a good time to purchase some thin mints. The transaction took longer than he anticipated however, and the bus driver began to pull out because he was unaware that not everyone was boarded. Dunks was luckily able to run us down just before we hit the main road.

After our team dinner it was time to relax a little bit. A bunch of guys including Haydon Almond, Mac Messier, and Nick Wright passed the time with some poker play. Curfew eventually came back around at 11:30pm and Coach Kowalo came back around to give us the game plan for Sunday’s rematches against Florence-Darlington and Monroe. On Sunday we came up short again in the first game against Florence Darlington, but came back with another win against Monroe, finishing the weekend 2-2. Although we always aim to do better than a winning percentage of .500 the weekend was still filled with some bright spots. Some highlight performances from the weekend included pitching outings from Austin Cross, Ashton Staubs, Avery Heiple, Trevor Thomas, Jonathon Money, and Colton Matthews. Haydon Almond had another strong weekend at the plate and Preston Taylor tallied six hits in the four games. Caleb Taylor and Zack Whitacre continued to look comfortable in the box and Devon Neal launched the first home run of our year and of his collegiate career. The box score might not show it, but Graham Brown was squaring up baseballs all weekend and was even robbed of a couple hits through way of web gems from the opposition. Connor Kelly shined with his work behind the plate and even threw out a runner from his knees during the first game on Saturday.

The team is coming together nicely and even though we’re are not satisfied with a 2-5 record, we are excited about where we are headed and the prospect of a promising season for the program. This coming week will bring the 2020 home opener at Golden Park and the chance to perform better in the first half of double headers. We also hope to have Coach Schafer back with us as he was unable to make the trip down south again because of some continuing health issues.

After our games on Sunday it was time to brave another eight-hour bus ride back to Keyser. To save us some time we ate on the road as Coach Little hooked us up with some takeout from Zaxby’s. After a couple more hours back on the road we made a quick restroom stop and filed back onto the bus for another movie. This time we settled in to be enlightened by the incredible life story of the one and only Joe Dirt. After the movie we made one more pit stop at another Pilot gas station where hot dogs were the popular snacking option. After the hot dogs and a few more hours on the bus we arrived back in Keyser around midnight, leaving us just enough time to get some rest and get to our classes the next morning.

Thank you for tuning in for another week of the Potomac State Baseball player diary! Be sure to check back in next week for a look into the action of our first home games of the 2020 season!