CALLING THE SHOTS

I made my annual Spring Break trip to Florida last week. Four area teams also made the trip south. The Corbin baseball team went to Hilton Head, the Williamsburg Yellow Jackets’ baseball team went to Cocoa Beach (Fl) while the Lady Redhounds traveled to Fort Walton Beach. Whitley County made the trip to Cocoa Beach as well.

It was a tough trip for the teams as they returned with a combined record of 2-15 after playing some pretty good teams.

Williamsburg took on number six ranked Owensboro Apollo twice and Ashland Blazer, who are ranked among the top 30 Kentucky teams. The Jackets played the Tomcats twice. They also played Frankin (TN) and Raceland. Raceland is a school much like Williamsburg and is a true Class A school. The Jackets lost that game, 6-3.

Williamsburg Coach John Mountjoy said, “It was a learning experience.” That’s the thing about these trips to Florida or South Carolina. It’s not all about winning. The trip allows for additional practice time and games. Some of the players got a wake up call when they had to play or practice at 9 a.m.

It is a great time to bond and enjoy themselves, but it is also a team to get to know your teammates on the field more than if you had to battle the Kentucky weather.

Corbin Coach Rob Ledington has always taken his teams south for Spring Break. The last several years the Redhounds have gone to Hilton Head. The Redhounds got in plenty of practice and four games against Hilton Head High School.

One of the parents told me Monday that no matter who they put on the mound; they could really throw the ball. The ‘Hounds scored just one run in four games.

Ledington feels the experience will pay off down the line. “We are going to play teams that will beat your brains out, but the reason we play those games is to make the district-seeded games and our regional competition a little but easier for us,” he said.

Ledington believes in playing a tough schedule throughout the season. After playing Williamsburg twice this week and Middlesboro Thursday, the Redhounds will take on 5^th ranked Bryan Station in Lexington Saturday. They will also play Tates Creek, one of the top teams in the state.

The same goes for the girls’ softball teams. Corbin played four games in Fort Walton Beach. The Lady Redhounds got to play some teams from Kentucky they will not likely see again. They played Paducah Tilghman, Whitesville Trinity, Campbellsville and Heath. Heath has been ranked in the top 25 for many years and has one of the strongest programs in western Kentucky.

I got to see the Corbin-Heath game and the Lady Pirates looked fundamentally sound. Corbin Coach Chris Hart has a very young team. They have actually surprised me, but Hart has put in some hard work with this bunch of girls and it is showing. After going 1-3 in Florida, they returned home to beat Somerset Monday night, 1-0. I think the trip to Florida may have been the difference in the win over Somerset.

Whitley County under first-year coach Amanda Moses went back to Cocoa Beach for the second year in a row. They played only three games, but got some good practice time in. “It was a good experience for the girls. We played some games, practiced and had a good time.”

The coaches agreed that the trip is not about wins and losses, it’s more about getting to know your teammates and coaches.

As far as my trip, I always find something different. My family and I went to Navarre Beach, which has one of the longest peer’s I have ever seen. I got to watch some guys surf some of the bigger waves I had not seen before. While we were there, my father-in-law’s cap blew into the ocean some 30-40 feet below the peer and one of the fisherman we have been talking to fished it out. I was sure that cap was history, but now it really has a story behind it.

I still haven’t gotten the nerve to go out on a fishing boat, but we did go out on a dolphin cruise and saw a mother and her baby.