North baseball young, full of potential
Last year’s North Fort Myers baseball team had one of its best records in a long time. This season, coach Tavaris Gary is starting from scratch.
With 10 players graduated, he has a very young team that has had its share of growing pains in a 3-8 start to the season.
The Red Knights have shown flashes of what they could be. On Feb. 23, they came back from a two-run, sixth-inning deficit to earn a 6-5 victory at Island Coast that ended with a play at the plate on a steal of home. That has been the one bright spot in an otherwise gloomy stretch in which North has lost seven of eight.
Lely outslugged the Red Knights two nights later 17-11, then the Gators got revenge with an 8-0 win at North. The Red Knights then was swept in a home-and-home series with Ida Baker by 3-2 and 2-0.
One thing coach Gary has taught his team is to not give up, and it has paid dividends.
“I teach my kids when they’re down in the fight, we have to continue to keep punching. As long as we execute, things will fall,” Gary said. “We’re still young. We have three seniors and everyone else is a junior, so we still have plenty of underclassmen, but it’s a new game for them.”
Among the players to look out for is Bryce Adkins, a sophomore catcher who calls a good game and blocks everything in front of him. Joe Logsdon, a senior reliever, sealed the win with two shutout innings of relief in the Island Coast win. Dylan Bloss, who started the game, struggled in spots, but made the big pitches to escape jams and keep his team in the game.
“He’s been on JV and I brought him up last year. He has become a leader and one of our captains. He stepped up his game over the summer in the weight room and is the first person on the field taking swings in the cages,” Gary said. “He wants it and I’m proud to see him step up.”
Gary has some big kids on his team. That doesn’t mean they rely on homers, though senior Sam Mieses delivered one in the Island Coast game, the first of the season.
“We rely on small ball. We have smaller hitters who get the ball on the ground and move the runner over, where the big hitters put the ball in play to get the runs in,” Gary said. “Sam is one of the strongest kids in the area. He’s being looked at by professional teams and could be a draft pick.”
Maturity will be the key for North, which is playing in a tough district where anyone can beat anyone on a given night.
“We’re playing comfortable, we’re playing confident. We were committing eight or nine errors a game, and tonight we had one,” Logsdon said. “We have a lot of young guys, but they’re looking up to me and Sam as seniors and seeing what we’re doing and our desire to win and they’re following behind us.”