Sandalwood- Spring Baseball is in the air as many highschool teams compete in spring break tournaments around the city. Tuesday featured a match at Sandalwood pitting The Saints against the Orange Park Raiders.
As the underdogs, Orangepark came into the contest ready to upset the Saints, while Sandalwood appeared to start the game flat. Raiders Sophomore pitcher Hunter Hackney kept the Saints off balance with a variety of off-speed pitches. Coach John Gay’s strategy was perfect seeing that the elements were against both teams. With the wind chopping through the air, Orange Park was able to run down several balls and make plays to keep it close through 7 innings. But Coach Billy Bell of Sandalwood got his team in gear.
He resorted to small ball, capitalizing on bunts. They benefited from a few ERAs from Orange Park in which they misplayed a few balls in the infield. Sandalwood was able to comeback for the win scoring 4 runs and defeated OrangePark 4-2.
For Coach Gay it was a tough loss in a tough season for his Orange Park team, but he has seen growth in his players. “I’m Proud of their effort. We graduated 8 players from last year, so we are still trying to learn each other; But we have a talented and good group of kids”. Coach played baseball at Forest high school, but realizes that today’s game is much differnt than the game he played which presents several high school coaching challenges. “We try to get the kids to play hard from the time the umpire says play ball, to the time the umpire says ball game. It’s tough because the players have a lot of different distractions and events that limit our time with them. Travel ball also makes it difficult because we have limited time with the players on our teams. But the Kids that buy into the program always succeed.
Coach Bell, a graduated of Sandalwood in the mid 80’s shares similar thoughts on the difficulties in coaching today’s game compared to the game he played. “The game was different then, the game has changed because of the new technology. They limit the kids to a drop 3 or minus 3 between the weight and the length of the bat, so the ball just doesn’t travel well or come off the bat as much”. So what we emulate her at Sandalwood are teams that are good pitching and play good defense”.It’s been a tougher sled this year for Sandalwood than last year, where they won 17 games but lost the District Championship to Mandarin in extra innings. Yet they have managed to put together a great group of players that have achieved another winning season for the Saints. Players like pitchers Tyler Buchannon, Malik Barrington, and Chris Lizzman have really stepped up for them on the mound. They look to get another crack at a district title this year.
