Young Talent Shows Potential for Upcoming Season

Perhaps it’s been said one too many times about one too many teams at Exeter in the 2013-2014 athletic season, but the truth is: Exeter has a young, athletic group of guys that’ll develop into a powerhouse in a few years. Shocker, right? The difference is, with some teams, they’re ready to go the second they hit the field and start off a new era with a championship. However, that wasn’t the case this year for boys’ varsity baseball.

This spring was a subpar 6-13 season, and not the type of performance that the team anticipated going into the season. The lesson learned here was that when a team graduates five seniors the previous year, even though eleven out of the twenty-two guys originally selected to be on the team were fresh young talent and a lot of the new uppers and postgraduates were strong recruits, one can’t just toss a bunch of athletes on a list and expect them to immediately win. Chemistry, teamwork and strong, experienced starting players are musts. While that was certainly true for many of the players who had been on the team for a number of years, boys’ baseball just wasn’t a winning recipe from the start, especially when a lot of the returning players were injured before the season began.

“I’d say we came into this year pretty optimistic about our chances. We were going to have a deep team with a good amount of returners, including a lot of bats that we felt confident about,” senior Alec Greaney said. “The biggest question mark was probably around the pitching, since we lost our two best starters from last year, Hunter Carey and Curtis Arsenault, who were both terrific. Even before the season started, though, we had already been affected by injuries. Spenser Young, who played some shortstop for us last year, was still out, and JT Thompson, who probably would have started in left field, tore his ACL. A few games into the year, we lost our starting right fielder Trevor Cosgrove.”

Although even the biggest baseball fans didn’t follow Big Red baseball after a 2-8 start to the season, a group effort kept the team running on its wheels. Throughout the season, the team bonded over the season, which will hopefully be a big part of what makes Big Red varsity baseball one of the more successful teams in the future.

“My favorite moments from this year came from practice every day,” lower Perry DeLorenzo said. “Whether it was Chief [Brendan] Rousseau hitting balls into the tennis courts, or Greg Shapiro making diving catches, we tried to keep practice exciting. We were never able to put together a string of games where we played well enough to win, but the next day we were always back at it. It was frustrating to go through struggles both as a team and individually, but I think we were always excited to go out and play baseball, no matter what our record was.”

As for the baseball itself, there were good games and there were bad games. There were 11-0 shutouts over Berwick Academy, and there were 10-21 losses to Worcester. The offense was patchy, the defense was inconsistent, and the pitching went from Clayton Kershaw levels of perfection to ERAs nearing double digits. When it was going good, it was going great, but when it was off, it was a blowout.

“E/a was quite a letdown for most of us, just like the rest of the season,” senior co-captain Nate Dow said. “After playing some really good baseball over the last half of the season, we really lost our focus at the end. Offensively unprepared and defensively unsound baseball really plagued us today. Speaking on behalf of the seniors, I can say that this was a really rough way to go out.”

Dow added that Big Red fans could expect a more successful season next year with plenty of returning talent. “With plenty of returning faces for next year's team, I think this experience will serve as inspiration for those underclassmen. Exeter will have some quality baseball players returning to the program next year, and, counting on some help from next season's fresh faces, they should be a competitive prep school baseball team for seasons to come.”

“One thing that was really important for us this season was our hitting,” upper Brendan Rosseau said. “Coming up with big hits in the clutch moments was something that made or broke this team. This past month, we've been playing some great baseball, but we turned it on just a little too late to be a contender in the playoffs.”

Indeed, the weak first half was enough to quash the team’s playoff dream, but as it all turned out, with the strong finish that was churned out, Exeter was able to rise from the bottom of the pack and only missed the playoffs by one game. The bats came alive, the pitching started to heat up, and the defense began to work well together. The -36 run differential in the first 11 games turned into a -1 over the last eight, and that was including the 13-1 demolition by Andover at E/a. Exeter beat the number one team in the league, Northfield Mount Hermon, twice over the course of the season. Big Red proved that they could run with the big dogs at the end of the season, and that there is nowhere to go but up.

Upper Parker Wild spoke of the pitching that improved consistently over the season. “At the beginning of the season, I don't think we were expecting to have enough pitching to make it through, but a couple of guys stepped up and pitched well consistently. Nate Dow always gave us a shot to win the game, and then Quinn Larkin, Vincent Sansone, and Austin Roberts really showed that they could hold their own,” he said. 

This certainly was not a season to remember, but its latter half proved that Big Red was more than fans gave the team credit for, and that Exeter would be a force to be reckoned with. From moments like Perry DeLorenzo hitting homers over Choate to Austin Roberts stealing home over an off-guard pitcher, there were moments of greatness, and the “rally rafters” seemed to shift toward Exeter at the end. It only took two bad seasons for the Washington Nationals to go from the worst record in the MLB to winning a very strong division: why can’t Exeter do it in one? There are going to be eight seniors leaving this year, not just five, and it’s not going to be any easier in the league next year. However, there is something great happening under the Big Red dugout, and it will be a treat to see them in action.

“We kept a good attitude for almost every inning we played, rooting on every guy in to pitch or up to bat,” Greaney said. “Joey Hebl and Nate Dow did a terrific job as our captains, leading us mentally and physically on the field. The team next year will have a lot of returners, and although there will be some holes, I’m confident that with the help of a couple new post grads this team can get back to the Worcester tournament.”

“If we had put together a few more good innings, who knows? Maybe we're competing for a championship,” DeLorenzo said. “All I know is, we’re going to be good. Real good.”