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2011 SEASON OUTLOOK |
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"Sharpen
The Saw" A baseball team striving to successfully compete is no different than a sharpened saw. Each player must be determined to improve all facets of his game each and every day, or he may lose his edge. And, in the fabric of high school baseball, where the mental, physical, and emotional strain of a seven-inning game is so innocently interwoven, keeping your edge can mean the difference between winning and losing. When all of the members of the team are dedicated to individual improvement, the team’s capacity to achieve begins to expand. And, from this approach, a single unit is formed; a unit with the ability to “remain sharp” in the face of adversity. If a team can evolve to this critical stage during the course of a season, then the very essence of “teamwork” can become a very effective and efficient tool for accomplishing the team’s goals. As the Ephrata Mounts become engaged in the 2011 high school baseball season, the team’s goals have been kept very ambiguous . . . and, with good reason. A season ago, with the regular season freshly completed, the Mounts had yet to resolve their final standing in league play. Adversity had become a nightmare, and the Mounts, needing one win in their final two games, were unable to seal the deal, forcing a deciding one-game tiebreaker with Solanco to settle unfinished business. As lifeless as the team appeared in the last week of the regular season, a different team, with a different look, took the field in the tie-breaker . . . The Mounts would go on to win their fifth Section 2 title in eight seasons, and their newfound momentum would catapult them, three wins later, to the school’s second League Championship in history. Not lost in all of this, was the fact that these achievements were carved out by a fairly young and inexperienced corps of underclassmen that stared adversity in the face and refused to flinch in the waning hours. Minus three graduates, that team has returned in 2011, along with the addition of a key player returning from injury, to allow many folks the opportunity to create lofty expectations for an encore performance. “I don’t mind the external expectations,” commented Mounts head coach Adrian Shelley, who enters his 14th season at the helm. “However, those expectations have to be carefully managed internally. If you listen to the noise long enough, you can easily be coaxed into complacency, and before long the saw becomes dull. Our expectations are to constantly improve, practice-by-practice, game-by-game. We can’t afford to look down the road because we have the Defending Champs target on our back. Every team in the league has been working this off-season with the intention of dethroning us. So, if we’re not sharpening the saw, by the time we reach May, we may not have any opportunities to build on last year’s success. That’s the beauty of competition, and the reason you start the season at 0-0. Yesterday doesn’t matter much, today. It’s what you do now, and the next day, and the next that will determine the future.” So, what are the team’s goals for 2011? “For the first time since I’ve been a head high school coach, I can honestly say that they are undefined, with one exception – we are striving to be the best we can be on that given day. We used to talk about Section championships, and then League championships, and so on, but I think we’ve all come to realize that if we stick to a very short-term, daily goal of constant improvement, both as individuals and as a team, the likelihood of achieving those kinds of long-term goals are much more attainable.” |
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