Falcons look to sharpen baseball tools in junior legion summer baseball
By Drake Horton
Contributing Writer
The Darlington Falcons baseball season might be over, but it is already trying to get a head start for next season.
As summer gets ready to take the place of spring, Darlington head coach Dennis Gearhart gets ready to guide Darlington’s junior legion baseball team for another, hopefully, successful season.
But the success that Gearhart is looking for when it comes down to summer ball is not limited to the wins and losses column. Instead, it is more geared to player development.
Of course Gearhart wants to win; every coach, every player wants to win, but when it comes to summer baseball, coaches and players look to really grow and transform their game into what they desire it be next season.
“As always, junior legion is a great opportunity for our guys to work on improving some parts of their game,” Gearhart said. “We encourage our guys to have fun.”
Getting young teenagers to buy into that philosophy can be difficult at times, however. This year in particular, Darlington had a very low turnout in tryouts.
“Our numbers were very low for tryouts,” Gearhart said. “We ended up talking a few more guys into playing.”
These low numbers have really turned this into an extremely young team for Gearhart.
“We will be a very young team,” Gearhart said. “We have only four returning players from last summer’s team, two that were starters in Jacques Mullins and Mike Dixon. Chase Weatherford is playing too; that helps.”
With youth comes growing pains and while the wins and losses are not what is the most important when it comes to junior legion, the competitive nature in people still drive them to want to win.
So what does Darlington have to do with a young team to win? The answer is pitchers finding the strike zone and having a solid defense behind them according to Gearhart.
“Pitching will be very thin, but we’re looking for some guys to pound the strike zone and hoping we play some solid defense behind them,” Gearhart said.
A big reason for the large level of youth on Darlington’s team this season is due to the creation of a Lamar junior legion team.
Legion ball, unlike high school baseball, can have players from different towns playing on the same team if they fit into the region and that town does not have a team. Lamar created its own team this year and Darlington is feeling the impacts from that.
“It hurts us to not get players from there or Trinity,” Gearhart said.
But with fewer players from other schools and town and more of his own the bright side is Gearhart now has a chance to craft more players who will be coming up through his program and will eventually play on his varsity team.
The success of this season will be best measured by the success of the varsity baseball team over the next couple of seasons as this is the beginning stages for these young players to grow.
“Based on what I’ve seen thus far there will only be a handful of guys playing this summer on our varsity roster next year, but a lot can happen between now and January,” Gearhart said.
So when watching this team, look at it from outside the box because while it might not look like anything just yet, these players could potentially be the next wave of varsity players for Darlington’s baseball team.