The baseball teams traveled to Phoenix, Arizona, over spring break to face new competition in the Coach Bob Invitational.
There is an open division and a championship division, which required an invitation. They were in the championship division and came out with four wins and one loss.
“We played really well and took second place and almost won the thing,” coach David Wilson said. “That trip every year, it allows all of our players to kind of get away and just be isolated together, and it seems like when we come back from that, we always have a great continuity.”
Competition that comes with traveling to play national teams at a varsity level also allows the team to learn from teams with different skill levels than they face in a typical high-school season.
This also gives more understanding toward the game in general.
“Getting the out-of-town experience, and then getting to play all these
other teams from different areas, especially in Arizona, you play these national teams that come from different states,” junior Jacob Garcia said. “It’s good to see the competition. You just got to compete every game, every pitch. Every team is good, really, so you just got to compete.”
The Arizona trip and the other out-of-town tournaments the team took helped better their relationships with one another.
“I learned to bond with my teammates better, and just play better overall with my teammates,” senior John McGowan said. “We would go out to eat as a team, in Arizona, we went to Top Golf and stuff like that.”
Even the losses help build the team up.
“You know, there’s a few losses in the trips that we’ve gone to, and just going back to the hotel together and just being with each other after a loss kind of helped us to just grow together,” McGowan said.
