August 19 - With the summer nearing its end, our 2016 NOVA Nine Team members and others recent high school graduates from the area are prepping for their first collegiate season.
Battlefield’s Jake Agnos, our NOVA Nine Player of the Year as well as The Washington Post’s All-Met Player of the Year, spent a couple weeks in Greenville, N.C., earlier this summer readying for his freshman year at East Carolina University. While there, he met his roommate, a fellow freshman, Bryant Packard, from D.H. Conley High School in Winterville, N.C., and some other of his Pirates teammates that weren’t still playing summer ball.
“The guys I did meet were all great, nice guys,” Agnos said. “They are good baseball players, and I’m excited to be their teammate. We’ve got something special there.”
East Carolina went 38-23-1 in the spring, winning the NCAA Regional in Charlottesville before falling in Super Regionals to Texas Tech.
Agnos and the rest of the Pirates will intrasquad scrimmage and lift weights this fall, with their toughest week coming in December. The official name for it is ‘Mission Week’, however the team has come to know that time as ‘Hell Week’.
“It’s just like two-a-days with football,” Agnos said. “You wake up 5 a.m., practice and do hard workouts, then go to class and come back and do it again. Coach [Cliff] Godwin has got a good thing going for us, and clearly it’s been working so I’m excited to get it all done.”
Agnos, who went 11-0 with a 0.54 ERA and had 136 strikeouts in 65 innings in leading the Bobcats to the 6A state final, said he wants to make an immediate impact on the team as a freshman. But he understands everything will have to be earned.
“My goal is to be a starter, hopefully on the weekend,” he said “I don’t see anyway how [starting] can’t be a realistic goal, so that’s what I am aiming at and I am going to do everything I can to achieve it. But if not, I will accept any role I get and help the team that way.”
Jared Dicesare was a major piece of Chantilly’s 19-game winning streak that ended with a win over Agnos’ Bobcats in the 6A state final. The North Region Player of the Year after going 11-0 with a 0.57 ERA, he will play for longtime coach Bill Brown at George Mason University. “I’m not playing this summer,” DiCesare said. “Just working out, kind of saving and conditioning myself for the fall.” DiCesare met most of his teammates earlier in the summer and mentioned that he knew a number of the other incoming freshman, many of whom come from the area. Like Agnos, DiCesare is excited about the college environment and to get to know his new teammates. “You’re in your own little world over there,” DiCesare said. “I’m excited to get to know the culture of the team and get after it with a new group of guys. Living with the guys will be another new and fun experience.” This fall, Mason players will lift weights three days a week, with scrimmages starting after Labor Day. For the remainder of the fall, the team will have Mondays off, but will practice and lift every other day. During the first weekend in November, Mason will have their Green and Gold World Series. The Patriots are looking to bounce back from a down season that saw them go 19-35 and 7-17 in the Atlantic-10 Conference. “We have a good group of guys,” DiCesare said. “A lot of maturity, young and old and guys who know how to win. I think it’s definitely something we have to earn and I’m ready to be a part of it. It’s going to be a real fun adventure and I can’t wait for to the next four years of it.”
Oakton’s Joe Rizzo and Flint Hill’s Khalil Lee were high picks in June’s Major League Baseball Draft and chose to bypass scholarships at the University of South Carolina and Liberty University, respectively.
The other six players from the NOVA Nine are set to begin their collegiate careers this fall, including Paul VI Catholic’s Jack Cunningham (Boston College), Kettle Run’s Brenton Doyle (Virginia Military Institute), Marshall’s Steven Johel (Coastal Carolina), C.D. Hylton’s Fox Semones (James Madison University) and Mountain View’s Alex Smith (Navy).
For a listing of where local players are heading to play in college, visit the Prep Baseball Report's commitment listing here.
Photo of Jake Agnos by Fred Ingham and photo of Jared DiCesare by Phil Dolinger.
