Welcome to the 2025 Potomac State Baseball player diary homepage. This season, Sophomores Jake Compton (Mentor, OH / Mentor High School, Chris Harbert (Bridgeport High School / Bridgeport, WV), and Tanner Haskiell (Southern High School / Terra Alta, WV) will take the lead on the Potomac State Baseball Player Diary.
Hello Catamount nation welcome back to the week 9 Potomac State Baseball Player Diary. It was a good week for the Catamounts as we went 6-0 with doubleheader sweeps over Erie Community College, Community College of Allegheny County, and Eastern Mennonite University.
Leading up to those sweeps we had a tough week of practice as we had some of our hardest and most focused practices of the year. We were working on improving our skills and ability to perform as a unit on the field. The start of the practice week consisted of seeing coach Little and Schafer sharing a 25-foot ladder. Turns out they were repairing a camera not only for the people at home to watch our games, but also for our state-of-the-art Sideline Scout system. The Sideline Scout system allows for 4 high-definition angles of every pitch of the game that are sent to the corresponding players' phones mere seconds after the at-bat is over. This allows us to review our at bats and pitches as well as use them to send out to coaches as that is vital for junior college players.
A new thing we started as a team is Coach Schafer will hand out lollipops to every player who gets hit by the pitch. It’s a good thing he just started this trend as Carson Boober (Martinsburg, WV) can satisfy his sweet tooth as he has been quite the ball magnet with a team leading 8 hit by pitches.
On Tuesday, with a pitching plan being to utilize the bullpen throughout the game, newcomers Gavin Bennett (Greenbrier, WV) and Landon Johnson (Winston-Salem, NC) both got their first collegiate starts against Eastern Mennonite. Although both had seen meaningful innings out of the pen this was their first time starting on the bump and both came to compete for us at a high level. Landon went 2 innings pitched giving up 1 hit with 2 strike outs and Bennett went 3 innings pitched with no runs on 1 hit and 4 strikeouts. Freshman Jayden Lester (Hurricane WV) made his first appearance on the mound giving up no hits and recording 2 strikeouts through 1 inning of work.
Other than our games this week it has been slow in Keyser as we are currently on spring break. During spring break coach Little has been kind enough to treat the team to dinner every night.
No classes provides us with loads of extra time to get down to the field and put some work in such as extra batting practice, fielding drills, cleaning up mechanics, and also some conditioning.
It also allows us to pick up on some of our personal hobbies we don’t normally have time for. A couple of guys including Cooper Polcovich, Logan Rotruck, and Caden Johnson decided to go trout fishing. Meanwhile Lance Hartley, Gavin Bennett, Seth Healy, and Chris Harbert went golfing at the local golf course here in Keyser (Polish Pines). Safe to say Chris and Gavin were the clear winners of the 2 vs 2 match through 9 holes. It also gives us a lot more time to bond as a team as we were all down at the baseball house after a double header to watch the first game of March Madness between University of North Carolina and San Diego State. Safe to say we are all cheering for San Diego State as we are upset that UNC got in with a bid over WVU.