June 4 - Their respective teams may have lost all of their games this spring, but don’t tell Ralph DiBari and Derek Taylor that all is lost with their high school baseball programs.
DiBari’s Park View team went 0-19 this spring, seeing its season end last month in a 10-0 defeat to Dominion in the 4A Conference 21B Tournament. The Patriots scored just three runs this season, were shutout in 17 of their games, and allowed double-digit runs in all but one of their contests.
Taylor’s Freedom-Woodbridge team, meanwhile, was 0-20, was beaten, 36-0, in its final regular season game, and did not participate in the 6A Conference 4 Tournament after injuries, defections, academic issues, work schedules and in one case, a family vacation, left the Eagles short-handed and on the verge of having to forfeit a game should a player get injured.
The two coaches face uphill battles, but their optimism when reached at the end of their seasons is refreshing considering the respective tasks at hand.
Park View opened its doors 40 years ago, the fourth high school to open in Loudoun County, which just added its 15th high school in Riverside this past year. For a number of years, the Patriots fielded contending teams, including as recently as early on in former coach Mickey Leap’s 12-year tenure at the school from 2002-13. In fact, Park View is one of just four teams from Loudoun to win a state championship, winning the Group AA title in 1984.
“I came in and didn’t have any grand illusions,” said DiBari, a 37-year high school coaching veteran who was an assistant with numerous region-championship teams at Lake Braddock and also served as an assistant at Langley and Annandale. “The numbers are low. It’s a challenge. We had 15 guys come out for baseball, and I turn around, and soccer has about 80 that come out.
“Demographics plays a big part of it, there has been a lot of change in the area.”
That shift in demographics and the opening of the new schools in Loudoun have slowly chipped at the once-proud program’s numbers, to the point where DiBari has had just 15, 13 and now 15 players in his program while winning just six of 59 games over his first three seasons.
According to the school’s website, Park View’s 2015-16 enrollment of 1,437 students is made up of 61 percent Hispanics, 18 percent whites, 14 percent Asians, five percent Black-African Americans, and three percent of what the school system classifies as ‘multi-race’ students. By comparison, the county-wide breakdown consists of 52 percent whites, 20 percent Asians, 17 percent Hispanics, seven percent Black-African Americans, and five percent ‘multi-race’.
The result has led to a drop in numbers for the baseball program as the population of students from nationalities not generally known for following or participating in the sport increases.
Another issue for Park View’s baseball program been the opening of Potomac Falls in 1997 and Dominion in 2003, which draw from the same youth league, Lower Loudoun Little League, that feeds into the Patriots’ program.
“We have some kids who come out that have never played before, some who haven’t played on the big diamond, and some of the kids who have played their whole life,” DiBari said. “So we’ve had to have a different approach. We have worked to get kids excited about playing baseball, something that other coaches might take for granted.
“And it’s just a great group of kids, we’ll be down 10 or 11 runs and I’ll look down the dugout, and you wouldn’t know it. Several coaches have come to me after games and told me how they enjoy how our kids approach things.”
Freedom, which opened in 2004, has similar demographic issues when it comes to interest in baseball. The school’s enrollment numbers from the 2014-15 school year included 52 percent Hispanic students, and seven percent white students.
But unlike Park View, the Freedom’s baseball program has yet to experience any success, or even a winning season, in its 12 years of fielding a team.
Taylor, who just completed his second season, is hoping to change that.
“I knew we would probably lose some games, but we were going to work hard, we’d compete,” Taylor said of when he took the Freedom job two years ago. “And then in two years, we would start being more competitive.”
His two-year plan hit a snag this spring, when the Eagles started the season with 14 players in the program. By the time the conference tournament rolled around last month, only 10 remained, and one of those players informed Taylor the week prior to the tournament that he would have to miss their conference first round game because of his work schedule.
As a result, Taylor and his athletic director, Steve Bryson, determined it would be best to drop out of the tournament, ending the prep careers of his three remaining seniors.
“Commitment issues and the quitting just left us in a bad position,” the coach said. “I felt for the other seniors because that’s how they had to go out. Unfortunately, you’re going to remember this season for how it ended.”
That being said, the former Hayfield, Lee and South County assistant remains positive about the direction of the program, which competes in a conference that had four teams win 14 or more games this season in C.D. Hylton, Colonial Forge, Riverbend and Forest Park and also boasts schools with good baseball traditions in Woodbridge and Gar-Field.
“Every coach is prideful in what he does,” Taylor said. “It was new to me last year, coming from the schools that I had been at.”
Taylor said his players need to make an offseason commitment as well for the program to take a step towards being competitive, including playing on summer and fall teams.
“I told them [at the end of the season], ‘Guys, you‘ve got to play to get better. Friday was the last game of the season and that can’t be the last time you pick up a baseball until tryouts begin next February’,” Taylor said. “I told them it was frustrating with the outcome this year, but from day one through the end of the season, the progression that was made from their ability to play, and that’s what motivated me.
“I told them, ‘From where you are now from where you came from, it’s light years. Now is the time to build on that’. We just need to continue to go out there, continue to work hard, and focus on controlling the things that you can control.”
DiBari has similar optimism, and hopes a projected increase in the program’s numbers based on the school’s incoming freshman class will allow the Patriots to field a junior varsity team for the first time in his tenure.
“We have everyone coming back next year, and indications are that our numbers will be up next year and we may be able to field a JV team, which would be huge for us,” he said. “The kids are pumped, and are ready for our summer conditioning. I think we are heading in the right direction.”
DiBari added: “Our goal is to be competitive in every game, and I think that is a real goal for us next year. We are going to continue to focus on the positives. It’s easy to be enthusiastic when you’re 18-2, it’s tougher to go out there every day when things aren’t going well. But the kids have grown to be a really good group.
“I’m thinking about next year already. I’m hoping that sooner rather than later, we will turn that corner and work our way back up.”
Photo of coach Derek Taylor courtesy of Freedom-Woodbridge baseball
