Coming off its eighth 20-win season and ninth league championship since 2001, the Madison High School baseball team was voted by the NOVA Baseball Magazine selection committee as the No. 1 team in the preseason Top 10 poll.
The Warhawks, which went 21-3 and claimed the Virginia 6A Conference 6 title before falling to McLean in a rain-shortened game the North Region semifinal round last spring, received 114 points to edge out Battlefield (108), including eight of the 12 first-place votes. Battlefield received the other four first-place votes. Two members of the selection committee chose to wait until the season began to submit their votes.
Madison returns one of the top pitching staffs in the state, led by Virginia Tech signee John DeFazio and left-hander Brian Eckert (pictured), who has signed with Radford University. Toss in senior David McGuire, who will play at Division II Francis Martin (S.C.), and junior Matt Favero as additional options on the mound, and head coach Mark “Pudge” Gjormand has reason to be excited entering his 20th season at the helm.
“The guys are very focused, they feel that our season ended a game early last year against McLean, and that didn’t sit well. They’ve been very focused in getting ready to get back on the field.”
In addition to assuming the top spot in the magazine’s inaugural poll, Madison also enters the season ranked No. 27 nationally by Baseball America.
“It’s nice to be thought of that way as a program, but the guys are smart enough to know that they don’t give the blue ribbons out at a Chili Cook-off until everything’s cooked and been judged,” said Gjormand, who has a 329-116 record at Madison. “And in this case, the blue ribbons aren’t given out until June.”
The magazine’s 14-member selection committee this season consists of media members and coaches from around Northern Virginia, including: Nick Eilerson of the Fairfax Times, David Fawcett of Prince William Today, Dave Facinoli of the Sun Gazette Newspapers, Jon Roetman of The Connection Newspapers, and Joey Kamide from the magazine; and coaches Kevin Ford (Chantilly), Jeff Nolan (Paul VI Catholic), Sam Plank (Stone Bridge), Tom Verbanic (Flint Hill), Sammy Serrano (Patriot), Aaron Tarr (Marshall), Jay Burkhart (Battlefield) and Doug Grove (Washington-Lee).
Battlefield, which went 16-5 and won the Conference 8 championship last spring, will be led by a trio of talented underclassmen that have already committed to play collegiately. Those players, junior right-hander Keagan McGinnis (Virginia Tech), junior lefty Jake Agnos (East Carolina) and sophomore catcher Tyler Solomon (Vanderbilt), will be leaned on to perform this spring as the Bobcats look to overcome the graduations of pitchers Nick Wells, who was a third-round draft pick of the Toronto Blue Jays, and Joe Williams, who is now at George Mason University.
Like Madison, Battlefield was also recognized in a national preseason poll, checking in at No. 47 in the Perfect Game Top 50 rankings.
Paul VI Catholic is the lone private school representative in the poll, checking in at No. 3. The Panthers and third-year skipper Jeff Nolan, the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC) Coach of the Year in 2014, went 19-8 last year and are expected to contend for their fourth conference championship in nine years this spring.
Conference 7 rivals West Springfield and Lake Braddock round out the top five, followed by Stone Bridge, Loudoun County’s lone representative in the rankings and the defending 5A North Region champions.
Patriot, which lost to Battlefield in their conference championship game last spring, is No. 7, just ahead of three Conference 5 teams, two-time defending league champion Oakton, defending 6A North Region champion Chantilly, and Centreville.
The next poll will be released at the end of the first full week of the regular season on Friday March 27, and then continuously each Friday through the end of the season.
Photo courtesy of Albert Jacquez
