Like football, CHS Baseball benefits from feeder system

(Column by Trevor Sherman)

They don’t call Corbin “America’s greatest little sports town” for nothing…

If you live here, or if you know much at all about it, then you know that claim is not just a boast. In fact, of all the “little sports towns” in America, a strong argument could be made that Corbin is, in fact, the greatest.

I do not have the time nor the space to get into all of the reasons why this is so, but if you want to know exactly what makes Corbin such a great sports town, then I would recommend you pick up a copy of Gary P. West’s The Boys From Corbin. It is available on Amazon now, as well as other book stores and online retailers.

But, I digress. The point of this column was not to discuss the rich sports history of Corbin, but rather to discuss what has led to so much success in recent years, particularly as it pertains to the high school’s varsity football and baseball programs.

It’s a simple concept, but it is something that not every town/school system can accomplish. Lucky for Corbin, the stars have aligned and they have been set up very nicely for many years now to reap the benefits that only a true feeder system provides.

With football, kids in the area begin learning basic formations and terminology at a young age thanks to the Tri-County Sports Authority’s youth football league.

While not every TCSA athlete will go on to attend Corbin Middle School, many of them do. And it is at this point they end up under the guidance of a fantastic staff of coaches who know just how to take what these players learned as youngsters, and add another level of difficulty that will allow the CMS Redhounds to continue to compete at a high level, remaining in the state title picture year after year.

By the time a player gets to high school, they already know pretty much ALL of the basics of how to play the game. They understand form, technique, how to communicate on the field, and they typically already have some sort of an understanding of what it means to play in a big game situation.

That is a great place to start, whereas many other varsity programs are going about the business of teaching their freshmen things like where to line up, how to properly block, form tackling, etc.

I see the exact same type of thing happening year after year with Corbin Baseball, as pretty much all of the athletes who have had a major impact on the diamond for the Hounds started out making deep runs in summer Little League All-Star tournaments. 

Little League may seem commonplace to some, and for the longest time it was pretty much all over the place, but in recent years the amount of towns out there continuing to enjoy viable leagues has dwindled pretty drastically. 

There are several reasons for this – lack of volunteers, lack of funds, a general decline in interest – but in Corbin the Little League program still seems to be going strong. Similar to TCSA, this is thanks to the fact that there are several men and women in our local community who care a great deal about Corbin being able to maintain its status as “America’s greatest little sports town.” These folks continue to put in the time, effort, and contribute monetarily to ensure the survival of youth sports here, and thanks to them the middle school and high school athletic programs also continue to enjoy great levels of success.

Same as in football, a team of Little League All-Stars already know quite a lot about the game of baseball before their first day in a middle school uniform. A very capable middle school coaching staff has led the CMS Hounds to multiple state championship tournament appearances, and once again, by the time these athletes reach their freshman year in high school they are ready to hit the ground running.

A fantastic illustration of the great fruit that the Corbin feeder system has produced came just this past Saturday, when the middle school Hounds were competing in the Final Four of this year’s state championship tournament, the high school Hounds were winning their third region title of the past four seasons (not including the “COVID year” of 2020), and then you had former Redhound great Chase Estep playing for the University of Kentucky Wildcats in the 2022 SEC tournament. Pretty unreal!

Corbin has enjoyed success in other sports thanks to the amount of work put in at the youth level. Soccer is probably the first to come to mind, with longtime Head Coach Armando Cima and his family leading the charge across all age groups. However, with the school’s baseball team now making another trip to the KHSAA state tournament, I wanted to comment on how impressed I have been with the dedication and coordination of so many who have played a role in building and maintaining a winning program.