March 19 - The benefits Spring Break trips and tournaments have on a high school baseball team are countless. Matched, perhaps, only by the numerous memories players and coaches take away from treks down to South Carolina and Florida or out to California for warmer weather and top-tier competition.
As a player and coach in Northern Virginia, I’ve witnessed from both aspects the affect these trips can have on a team - almost always a positive one. Players are able to use the time together away from the field to bond, whether it’s on trips to the beach, to all-you-can-eat wing joints, arcades, Major League Baseball Spring Training games, or just hanging out at the hotel, playing video games and lounging at the pool. At their age they may not realize it, but the camaraderie they’re developing while spending all that time together away from the field builds chemistry that can help their collective performance on it. For a number of seasons as a coach, I’ve been with teams where the dugout feels like a library before Spring Break. By the time we return, we can’t get the players to shut up. They’ve got their secret handshakes down to a science. The skinny, pimple-faced 15-year-old freshman who might before have been intimidated by his older teammates - who at 17- or 18-years-old are essentially men - is now comfortable joining in on the sunflower seed competitions and other locker room and dugout banter and jokes. That chemistry carries over onto the field. The four, five or six games the team plays over five days during the week allow the players to get more comfortable with each other. Especially in a season like this one, where Spring Break is earlier in the season. The amount of baseball played in a short period of time allows catchers to become more comfortable with their pitchers and their tendencies. Middle infielders become more comfortable with each other on double play balls. Relays, first-and-third plays, bunt coverages - all aspects of the game that might have been shaky before departing are run more smoothly by the end of the week. Not to mention, the weather is perfect for baseball, as many times teams head south not having been outside much for practice due to extended winter weather. And this all while playing against some great competition. The teams down south begin their seasons earlier, and often are more than halfway through their regular season schedules while Northern Virginia teams have just a couple games under their belts. Many of the team boast several Division I or pro prospects in these hotbeds for baseball talent. The experience playing against this level of competition helps prepare teams for the postseason. I know coaches who have won region and state championships who credit their team’s experience at their Spring Break tournament for helping to prepare their team for their playoff run. Some of my favorite memories as a high school coach have come on Spring Break trips - which I’ve taken as a coach at Madison, Centreville and Oakton to destinations such as the Hanahan Invitational Tournament (H.I.T.) in Charleston, S.C., and to Florida for the Sarasota Baseball Classic, Orlando National Baseball Classic and ‘The Classic’ tournament played at Sanford Memorial Stadium, which is famous for being the park where Jackie Robinson made his professional debut in 1946. As a coach at Madison, we played nationally-ranked teams in winning the H.I.T. in 2006, and advancing to the championship game in Orlando in 2007. During that tournament run in 2006, the Warhawks fell behind 9-0 to a team from South Carolina (the school’s name slips my mind), only to rally for a 10-9 win, one of the most-enjoyable games I’ve been a part of. Jimmy Goldsmith, another assistant with Madison, lost his voice he was so fired up that day, to the point where he could barely hollar his patented, “It’s a great day for baseball!”, when we arrived at the field the following day. The following year in Orlando, Madison was nationally-ranked and beat a Palm Beach Gardens team that was apparently set to be named the No. 1 team in the country by USAToday, before falling to us in the semifinals. While coaching at Centreville, we had a rough start in 2009 at the H.I.T., losing our opening game against a first-year school that didn’t have any seniors and started a number of freshmen. One of my closest friends and coaching colleagues, Morgan Spencer, then the head coach at Centreville, had one of the classic blow-ups in recent Northern Virginia high school baseball after that game. We as a coaching staff were interested to see how our kids responded, both from the loss and Spencer’s postgame speech. I think we split our games that week, but the Wildcats seemed to really come together from that point on that season, which was highlighted by a first-round regional upset of a loaded McLean team. (I’m sorry, J.T., I couldn’t resist!) And at Oakton in 2014, we didn’t do real well down at the H.I.T., but a team that didn’t have huge expectations after graduating a number of starters from a 2013 team that went to the state playoffs seemed to find a spark from that week on, and went on to win the 6A Conference 5 championship. So my message for the players and coaches reading this column is enjoy your time together on Spring Break. Players, take some time away from your clique and hang with the guys on the team you might not normally hang with. Coaches, find as many productive team-building activities as possible away from the field without burning your guys out. When I coached under Mark ‘Pudge’ Gjormand at Madison, he would always say the trek south was a ‘business trip’. I agree with his sentiment in that the goal should always be to win a championship if you’re competing for one. But the trip should also be more than taking care of business on the field, especially considering the time and energy the players, coaches and parents in the program spent fundraising and coordinating to make the trip happen. Enjoy your time together, live in the moment while cherishing the lasting memories you’ll recall for years with your teammates, and come back hitting on all cylinders for what we all hope will be a great high school baseball season in Northern Virginia.
Photo courtesy of the City of Sanford, Florida
