The Memorial baseball team will start its season Saturday, a couple days later than expected after the cold canceled the first two days of the Denton Tournament.
The Messenger sat down with coach Rob Johnson to discuss his expectations, key players and strengths for the Mavericks’ first season.
Q: What are your expectations for this season?
A: Expectations are obviously to compete for district championships number one. Number two is in a first-year program, we really want to kind of set the standard for now, the present and the future. For our young kids as well, but ultimately our number one goal is to compete for a district championship and then hopefully be a playoff team and win a series. But I think the big picture is, we’re trying to establish something brand new, not only for now, but for the future as well. So it’s kind of a unique situation, being it’s year one for the program.
Q: Who are some of your key players?
A: All this is going to be based on some previous success at Rider. Grey Johnson will be our lead-off hitter and outfielder, Champ Wall was one of our top pitchers last year at Rider as well. Brady Pope coming back from an arm injury last year, he’s expected to be a high-level player for us. Austin Feldman was a high-level player for us last year from Rider. Carter Hoffman is a left-handed pitcher and will be an outfielder with us as well. Then we have a couple new guys as in guys that’ll be getting their teeth wet at the varsity level. Jacob Swafford will pitch and catch for us a little bit. Caleb Matthews and then Vanson Jones will be a shortstop. So those six or seven guys we’re really going to rely on from previous success and varsity level experience to kind of get us going on the right track.”
Q: What does it feel like to shape the first baseball team at Memorial?
A: It’s really exciting you know, there’s a lot of new things. Everything from our equipment to our uniforms to the way we do things, everything’s different. Everybody kind of pulls from their previous experiences, whether it be from Rider, Hirschi, Old High. It’s been really fun, there’s been some difficult moments with equipment, facilities obviously you know aren’t quite completed, but we’ve been able to be on the field all year long. So the things that have been out of our control we really can’t worry about, but it’s been exciting you know, we’re all coming up with our team logos and team sayings and developing a tradition starting from year one. Overall, it’s been very positive I would think.”
Q: What do you think will be some of your biggest problems for this upcoming season?
A: I would say challenges are going to be our depth on the varsity level. It’s a concern, we’re going to have 14-16 guys, so we’re going to have to stay healthy. What I talk to our kids all the time about is stay eligible. You can’t help us if you’re not eligible. Number two, stay healthy. And number three, try to prevent the stupid stuff. What I mean is, don’t go four wheeling on the weekend. Injuries are going to happen, but some things we can try to prevent. Don’t go out and try to rock climb on the weekend or like I said go four wheeling or go mudding on the weekends when you know you’re in the middle of a season. Just try to prevent what I call the stupid potential injuries. But number one, we got to stay healthy, we’ve got to take care of each other, because our lack of depth is a huge concern. Our depth is good at both JV levels, but at the varsity level, like I said, 14-16 guys is not a lot to play a 30-game schedule.”
Q: How about your team’s strengths?
A: We do have a good nucleus of guys that have had varsity experience and have been successful. The six or seven guys I’ve named have all already had tons of playing experience at the varsity level. For instance, Grey Johnson, all district outfielder from last year, first teamer. Champ Wall and Carter Hoffman are second teamers, all-district pitchers. Austin Feldman was an all-district DH. Brady Pope had limited playing last year due to his injury, but had a lot of experience, same with Caleb Matthews. And then Vanson Jones is a move-in from Denton Braswell where he was their starter at shortstop the last two years at a 6A program, so he obviously has a lot of experience at the varsity level. Our strength will be those seven or eight guys that have that experience. Now we have to bring along the guys that are just now getting their teeth wet at the varsity level, because just like any level of any sport, the game’s a little bit quicker the higher level you go.”
Q: How do you think the team can improve before the first game?
A: Fundamentals, we always stress the fundamentals in the small things, the small details. We say this a lot “if we take care of the little things, the big things take care of themselves.” So it’s pitching, defense and situational hitting, I think those are our three keys to success. For our first four scrimmages, it’s been kind of a mixed bag of results. We’ve been good at times and there’s some areas where we need to get a little bit better. We’re missing out on a few games this weekend due to weather, which it’s partly for that, so we’ll spend the next two weeks in tournaments kind of working through some issues and getting ourselves ready for district play. We purposely scheduled a very difficult tournament schedule for that reason, in which we’re going to struggle at times. We’re going to play teams that have more talent than us, but that’s going to hopefully prepare us for our district race. So, concentrate on fundamentals, pitching defense and situational hitting. You take care of those three things, you’re going to give yourself a chance to win every day.”
Q: Do you think your players are ready to start the season?
A: Yes, we purposely got more practice time in before we started scrimmaging because I felt like we would need it. And now we’ve had this weather that’s interrupted. We were supposed to play two Thursday and two Friday, so I think they’re chomping at the bit. They’re tired of practicing with each other, they’re tired of being limited to practice. I think they’re just ready to play, and there’s no doubt that our kids are tired of practicing and mother nature has thrown a few wrinkles in there before us, but at the end of the day, we’re going to have opportunities to start playing next week. It’s going to be great weather. We do play two Saturday, so we’ll see how that goes, but then next week we got one on Monday, and we’ll play about six games next week, so it’ll be trial by fire in a hurry, but no doubt they’re excited.
