CVCA baseball team has new coach and plenty of youth

Posted by Patrick Hyland on Saturday, March 26, 2011 · Leave a Comment 

 

Youth is the theme for the nine Division III or IV baseball teams in the SportsInk.com coverage area, as each of the schools is looking to see which young players will step up to fill vacancies.

Nowhere is that focus on youth more evident than at Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy, where first-year coach Kevin Gross has just one senior. The Royals do find four returning starters, led by junior catcher David Gray, who hit well above .400 as a sophomore. Sophomore Kyle Edmonds will find his name at the top of the lineup card again in the leadoff spot. Beyond of Gray and Edmonds, there are question marks as to who will provide offense.

While the Royals have a few top hitters and need to find more bats, the opposite can be said for their pitching staff.

“The depth is there (in the pitching staff), but there’s a lot of youth as well,” Gross said.  “A lot will be sorted out through the year as to who will step forward.”

Senior David Walker will be joined in the rotation by Nathan Rosenberger, Edmonds, Matt Salyer, Elijah Brook, Caleb Kleibscheidel and freshman Mark Miller,  all of whom will vye for innings this season.

Gross said the rough-and-tumble Principals Athletic Conference is about improvement and competitiveness for CVCA, no matter who is sitting in the opposite dugout.

Battling in the middle of the PAC-7 with the Royals will be arch rival Manchester, where Panthers coach Derrick Mauger has the unenviable task of replacing two All-Northeast Inland District honorees in Jesse Bumgarner and Justin Wigington.

Manchester and CVCA finished 2010 with identical 11-17 records after both lost opening-round sectional tournament games.

Junior Mitch Keim will lead the Panthers this year both at the plate and on the mound. Keim hit .371 with five home runs and 12 doubles in his sophomore campaign, as well pitching Manchester’s toughest games.

Mauger sees the Panthers as a team needing to set the table for the RBI-man in Keim.

“Other than Mitch, we don’t have much power, but we have a lot of guys that can put the ball in play,” Mauger said.  “We do a great job of hitting to the opposite field.”

Following Keim in the rotation will be sophomore Zack Kaufman, Jake Bumgarner, Cody Miller and Dylan Lehimier.

In the Patriot Athletic Conference, Black River (12-14 in 2010) returns an experienced pitching staff of seniors Jon Sas, Todd Gentile and Jarrod Pierce that accounted for all of the Pirates’ wins in 2010.

“Our goals would be to win the conference and have a deep run in the tournament,” coach Dozier Hendershot III said.  “This will take the pitching staff to be much better than it has been in the past, and I will need to find guys that can step up offensively outside of the big three.”

Black River’s “big three” are Jon Sas, Jake O’Connor and Jake Sas, all of whom return after having good performances last spring and make up three of the Pirates’ five returning starters.

The final six SportsInk.com teams all reside in the Portage Trail Conference County Division. And while the division’s two Division II teams, Woodridge (14-0 in County play) and Streetsboro (10-4), reigned supreme in divisional play to take the top two spots, the conference’s smaller schools all pushed the Bulldogs and Rockets and made some noise of their own.

Waterloo (17-13, 9-5) finished third in the County Division and was the only school to capture a district championship in 2010 from either the PTC County Division or Division III or IV. The Vikings stormed through the Parma Heights Division III District, defeating Rocky River Lutheran West in the district championship game. 

Senior twins Hunter Fontello and John Fontello return to man the infield for defending PTC Coach of the Year Jim Conley as Waterloo begins its quest to repeat as district champion. The Vikings are another team looking to reload after a strong 2010 season.

After winning the league championship in 2009, Garrettsville Garfield took a step back, finishing fourth in the division and bowing out in the district semifinals to Lutheran West. The G-Men are the only team besides Woodridge to win the County Division during the conference’s five-year existence. That 2009 squad advanced to the state semifinals before losing to eventual state champion Gnadenhutten Indian Valley, which Manchester and CVCA must deal with in league play.

Senior pitching ace Brandon Baumgardner, along with juniors Bob Bright in the outfield and Sebastian Neikirk in the infield, lead an experienced team of juniors and seniors who remember the trip to Columbus and would like to make another run. Senior Robert Altemus and juniors Austin Click and Cody Berg give coach Beau Norton plenty of experience to call upon.

Jason Hall, beginning his 12th season at East Canton, is one of the most experienced coaches in the league. Much like the East Canton boys basketball team in 2009-10, the baseball squad graduated a talented group of seniors last season. Still, Hall does bring back a group of experienced players as well. On the infield, seniors Ryan Burfield and Niko Dimos return to provide veteran leadership. While Burfield plays shortstop and Dimos catches, both can also share time on the mound. Juniors Sam Elseser and Brandon Schultz are veterans for the Hornets in the outfield.

Rootstown matched East Canton’s 6-8 conference record a year ago to tie for fifth place. Now the Rovers are looking for more with senior outfielder Ian Pfeiderer and fellow senior second baseman Jarek Marva leading the way. Also, like the Hornets, Rootstown dropped its first sectional game last spring.  

Rounding out the PTC County Division are Mogadore and Windham, which are looking to bounce back after struggling a year ago. Both the Wildcats and Bombers won a sectional game last spring before losing to the teams that eventually met each other in the Akron Division IV District championship game, Rittman and Berlin Center Western Reserve. 

Mogadore welcomes back last year’s most promising player in senior outfielder/pitcher Jordan Eldredge, who led the Wildcats in batting as a junior with a .411 average. Eldredge also topped Mogadore’s pitching staff with a 3.00 ERA. After Eldredge, though, the Wildcats are another young team.

Talented senior pitcher/outfielder Josh Simmons returns to lead the Bombers this year.

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