One of country’s best high school baseball teams deals with lost season
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (BVM) — The state of Tennessee would’ve provided some of the nation’s best high school baseball this spring, but due to government restrictions of COVID-19, one team particularly missed out this season. Knoxville is home of the Farragut Admirals, last year’s Class AAA state champions finishing 42-3, who were projected to be among the best teams in the country, let alone Tennessee. Before the season began, Farragut was listed No. 10 on MaxPreps’ top 100 national baseball rankings in February and was also listed as No. 17 on Perfect Game’s national high school top 50.
However, due to COVID-19, the team will not be able to show off its skills this year.
“I think most of our guys felt like we had a pretty good club. We were just trying to get ready to play this season and hopefully play well at the end and compete at a high level at the end of the year,” Farragut head baseball coach Matthew Buckner said. “I felt pretty good about our club. I felt like we were going to take some time to try and get things together because we lost six position players off of last year’s team … but I felt like it was a pretty good opportunity to be really competitive at the end.”
The Admirals would have fielded one of the country’s best pitching rotations headlined by senior right-handed pitcher Ryan Hagenow, an all-state selection last year. Hagenow, a University of Kentucky commit, was listed by MaxPreps as a preseason All-American. The team also has a number of other Division I arms including University of Tennessee commit senior left-handed pitcher Andrew Patterson and a pair of East Tennessee State University southpaws in Adam Birkholz and Hunter Merrick. The team would also return junior shortstop Angus Pence, another Tennessee commit.
This strength in players was one of the points that Buckner felt gave the team a great chance to play late in the year and possibly play in a championship.
“We have four Division I pitchers, three junior college pitchers, an SEC commit shortstop, our center fielder is going to a Division II school and I felt like we had a couple other players that are probably Division I players so yeah I felt pretty good about our club and had a good chance to gel at the end and play really good,” Buckner said.
The team had gone through a few regular season games before the shutdown and was actually supposed to go to Florida at the end of the week they found out things were going to be shut down. Buckner told the team that he hoped for the best and that they’d be able to play soon, but that won’t be the case now.
“I got the guys together and kind of talked to them and said hope for the best and hopefully we’ll be able to come back and play and pray for our country and hopefully things get better,” Buckner said. “We talked about it and I told them to grab all their stuff out of their locker in case this goes long and it did. So at that point, we gathered everything out of our lockers and took all their stuff because if you’re going to work on baseball you’re not going to work there.
“I told them to take all their stuff and pretend we’re not going to be there for a while and turns out we are not going to be there for a while. At the time I didn’t know, but even if it was a couple of weeks I wanted them to be prepared for that, but I had no idea it was going to be like this.”
Buckner said one of the things about the cancellation of this season that is hard is that some players have been waiting for the opportunity to play and now they won’t be able to leave their mark on the program like senior outfielder Cal Stark, who Buckner was excited to see play.
“We’ve had some guys that have been waiting in the wings and this was their time and so it stinks for them,” Buckner said. “I hate it for our kids and hate it for all the kids everywhere that have put so much time and effort into the game. Like I said, it’s a tough thing for everybody.”
The ball club started its season strong with Farragut winning three of its first four games. The Admirals were also scheduled to play a couple of high-level programs this season as they had games against Flanagan High School in Florida and a match up against in-state powerhouse Baylor set for April 24 at Farragut. Buckner sees it as a missed opportunity for a fun game against a quality opponent.
“It would have been a fun match up for sure,” Buckner said. “We were both looking forward to it and it would’ve been a fun match up and hopefully we could still have it.”
The biggest thing the team wants to get out of this season is not anything they can achieve on the field. Not a home run, not a championship trophy, but health for their players and their families.
“As far as the grand scheme of things that are going on right now, baseball is pretty low on the totem pole. With respect to the people who are going through a lot, it’s hard to take baseball into a real importance or any game to be honest with you,” Buckner said. “At the end of the day, I texted them yesterday and said that I’m sorry it’s happening to you guys and your season, but at the end of the day I hope all you guys end up healthy and safe through this. If that happens, then I’m going to take that as a win because I’ll be happy if all of them stay safe and their families do also.
“Like I said, baseball takes a little bit of a backseat for sure and I’ll be honest with you, in
most of our kids lives it hasn’t taken a backseat for much.”
