In life, circling the wagons and gathering the troops is often a last ditch effort. In sports, there is different verbiage. Some call it rebuilding. Others call it reloading.
The Gaston Greyhounds call it finishing a puzzle. A puzzle with no certain picture. And some missing pieces.
Even still, the Greyhounds are mixing the late-season success of last year with the addition of a new coach and planning for a turnaround.
Coming off back-to-back 5-15 seasons, Gaston athletic director Jerry Mettee decided it was time for a change. He looked to Sean Casey to take the reins.
“Sean is a local guy, we’ve known of him for several years.” Mettee said. “We’ve seen his passion for sports and baseball. I appreciate his desire to learn the game and improve his ability to coach through workshops, classes, clinics and through talking with others. He brings a lot of passion and desire.”
Casey has lived in the area for over a decade and coached in the community for many years. Mettee wants to utilize Casey’s structured approach. He said he’s looking for Casey to help the program grow through fundamentals, discipline and a competitive attitude.
“When I say discipline, I want our athletes to have respectful behavior and work hard,” Mettee said. “Those are the behaviors of a successful athlete and individual. We want our kids to compete in the classroom and on the ball field.”
Casey’s approach isn’t an overnight process. Along with his assistant coach, former Pacific player Matt Kinoshita, Casey starts at the core of baseball fundamentals and builds a base from which each player will grow. He wants to turn Gaston into a respectable program.
“I knew the situation going in,” Casey said. “I knew the situation out here. I know what level of play needs to be. I know what top-ranked teams look like. And we don’t resemble that yet.
“We’re trying to get the guidelines in there and trying to get the guys to play as a team. We want them to have a philosophy in the batters box and on defense. We just need to put more thought into it.”
He isn’t rebuilding the program, just changing its direction. Casey is helping players break years of bad habits. It won’t happen overnight or even in one season, he said. And making Casey’s job even harder is the fact that he is losing prospective players in the face of foul weather.
“Our field is under two feet of water,” Casey said. “We’ve got ducks swimming around the infield.”
Recruitment is easy when it’s 70 degrees and sunny. Fundamentals are easy to teach, Casey said, when the players can get out and play. But for now the team is stuck indoors. The players can’t truly get a feel for ground balls when they are playing on a gym floor, nor can they flex their throwing muscles when the outfielders are only 120 feet from home plate.
Casey mentioned that getting players “in the dirt” is as important as any of the fundamentals he can teach. And right now, the field is so bad Casey isn’t planning on having a home game the entire season.
“I think they are getting stir crazy. We’re asking them to work hard in practice and then we don’t get that crowd support when we play all of these away games,” Casey said. “Its not as exciting and when I came in I wanted to build excitement. I wanted to get people interested.”
But people aren’t interested. Even Mettee noticed that.
“Numbers are down. I don’t know why,” Mettee said. “There are a lot of distractions and options for kids. Some kids feel they have to work. And to some degree, there is a bit of apathy in not getting involved. But, I hear that in every community I go to.”
The Gaston roster is currently only 14 players deep, leaving the program too thin to field a JV team. Captain Brian McCauley will lead the Greyhounds along with fellow senior Marcos Zamora and junior Tyler Lewis, as they help groom a squad comprised mainly of sophomores and freshmen.
“Our whole pitching staff is freshmen and sophomores,” Casey said. “And some of my hitters have never seen a curve ball.”
Casey is worried about the trickle-down effect – fewer players trying out means Gaston will have fewer varsity players with in-game experience when they start their careers. That translates to fewer wins in the stat book.
Both Mettee and Casey echoed the same message – this year isn’t about wins and losses; it’s about turning the ship in the right direction and getting Gaston excited about baseball again.
Baseball has lost ground in the past few years to other spring sports. For example, Gaston joined with Yamhill-Carlton to offer athletes the opportunity to join the Y-C track and field team. Most students chose one or the other, but Gaston sophomore David Carr chose both.
“He is involved in the baseball program but he is trying to do track as well,” Mettee said of Carr, a four-sport athlete. “In fact, at a small school like Gaston, I wish every kid would do that. Get involved, help fellow students out, contribute and enjoy the experience.”
Added Casey: “We have to share [Carr] with Yamhill track. So we don’t have him at all of the practices but he is a good athlete. We’ve got a couple of great young kids. Sophomore Dusty Brown and freshman Levi Watkins will [play well] for us, too.”
Offering a track team to their flooded neighbors isn’t the only help that Yamhill-Carlton has offered this season.
“I think Yamhill is going to let us use one of their fields,” Casey said. “Jerry is trying to figure it all out for us. But it won’t be easy because as soon as the sun comes out they are going to want to use it.”
In the meantime, Gaston has played some stiff competition to open the season. The Greyhounds beat a talented Vernonia team 6-4 early in the year, but has since dropped games to 4A Yamhill-Carlton and a handful of other 3A teams during the Columbia River Bash. The Hounds lost to Horizon Christian 7-2 last Wednesday to close out the pre-season.
“We led until the last inning,” Casey said. “We had a bad inning. We let a couple calls get the best of us and lost our composure. We went from a 2-0 lead to losing 7-2.”
Gaston opens up Northwest League play – in a league where three of the teams are ranked in the state top 10 – this week against Country Christian. Though, the team won’t be playing at home anytime in the foreseeable future.
“We just don’t have a field that’s playable.”
And that’s a big piece of the puzzle. Another piece that’s missing.
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