Junior legion gives young baseball players an opportunity in the summer
By Drake Horton, Contributing Writer
While high school baseball might be over, that does not mean that the baseball season is coming to an end.
As the spring ends and the summer begins, high school players from all over will be looking for opportunities to play baseball over the summer to better help develop their craft; one of those opportunities is the junior legion baseball team in Darlington.
Dennis Gearhart, who is also the head coach for the Darlington Falcons high school varsity baseball team, begins his third year as the head coach of Post 13, Darlington’s junior legion team.
While Gearhart would love to have every eligible Falcon baseball player on Post 13, that is not the case this season for various reasons, and that requires him to look elsewhere for other players to help fill out his roster.
“Summertime in baseball, there are a lot of revolving parts. We have some guys that we would love to have out here with us that we had in the spring, but they are pursuing other opportunities,” Gearhart said. “With age restrictions there were a couple of guys we wanted to play that couldn’t because they were too old, but we picked up some really quality players from Lamar. We got four guys from them and they will see a lot of time on the field so I’m looking forward to working with them. Our catcher is a Trinity-Byrnes guy, Trae Buck, and what I’ve seen so far he’s lights out back there.”
Gearhart really likes the makeup of his team and believes that they can be really competitive. However, in baseball, pitching is the key to winning and that looks to be the thinnest part of the team.
“My concern is going to be our pitching,” Gearhart said. “We are not real deep, our pitching staff is not real deep, but we just have to find a way to play great defense and generate some runs.”
And if that is not enough to make a season challenging then the schedule will be. Darlington plays in an absolute gauntlet of a region that is comprised of Hartsville, South Florence Blue, West Florence, Cheraw, McBee and Marlboro County.
“It’s a very difficult region,” Gearhart said.
Playing against great competitors can have its perks, however.
“The good thing is you are seeing quality baseball,” Gearhart said. “You’re not playing teams that you are going to blow out. It forces you to get better and play good baseball to win.”
The beauty of summer baseball, though, is not always about the wins and losses, but about the growth of the players that participate. While Gearhart is the first to tell you that once you take the field you should want to win, the big picture of this is to insure that the players are better when they take the field next spring for their respective high schools.
“We take summer baseball as an opportunity for us to find some way to improve our game and that is why I ask the guys to focus on an area that they feel they need to get better at now.”