It was a matter of confidence.
Coupeville fielded a summer baseball team for high-school aged players for the first time in 10 years, and coach Willie Smith said the team reached its primary goal, to gain confidence.
Although Coupeville had a smattering of players participate in summer baseball with Oak Harbor teams over the past decade, it was unable to get enough players in any one year to field its own team until this summer, Smith said.
Having his team together for the summer, Smith was able to work on rebuilding the club’s confidence after a rugged high-school season.
Mission accomplished. As the summer progressed, Smith said, so did his players’ confidence in their abilities.
The core of this summer’s squad was the same that helped Coupeville win the state Junior Little League title in 2010. However, when that group, with its confidence bolstered by the state championship, entered high-school and was forced to face senior-laden teams from perennially powerful AA teams in the Cascade Conference during the school year, it took its lumps.
As the losses mounted, the team’s confidence waned.
Smith said, “They lost it (confidence) very quickly; baseball is a cruel game at the high-school level when you are playing freshmen and sophomores against seniors.”
The successful summer helped the Coupeville players get “some swagger back,” Smith said.
Jake Tumblin, the starting catcher for the high-school team the past two years, lived through those tough times. He said, “Once we started going downhill, it was hard for us to climb back up. The summer helped us get our confidence back and it should incline as we get more wins…I think the next two years are going to be a real turnaround.”
Confidence wasn’t the only positive by-product of the summer season. The team gained a greater understanding about baseball and its fundamentals, Smith said. “The kids are skilled and talented, but they still have a lot to learn about the game.”
Coupeville won half of its summer games and was competitive in all but one loss, unlike the high-school season when many of the defeats were one-sided.
“The (summer) games we lost were because of a mistake at a bad time,” Smith said. “You can’t learn how to deal with that stuff unless you play games like that.”
The summer also allowed Smith and the players to experiment.
“The players were willing to try different things,” Smith said. Infielders Aaron Curtin, Aaron Trumbull and Drew Chan, for example, got some playing time in the outfield, giving them and the team more versatility.
Others took advantage of the opportunity to audition for next-year’s high-school team. Josh Bayne, after limited appearances during the school season, received ample innings at shortstop and on the mound. Eighth-grader Cole Payne learned what it was like playing at the high-school level.
Curtin also developed into the team’s “most dominant pitcher,” Smith said.
“Everyone grew as ballplayers,” Smith said, emphasizing a key component of the summer season. Kurtis Smith, for example, struggled on both offense and defense during the school year, coach Smith said, but by the end of the summer “they couldn’t get him out.” Defensively, he cut down three base runners with outfield assists.
Tumblin, who will be a junior in the fall, said the summer “keeps you in the flow.” He added, “It’s really good practice against better competition.”
Tumblin noted that teams can become numb to losing, so another benefit of this summer’s experience was the players learned “to hate to lose again.”
On a personal note, Tumblin said the summer helped him gain a “new sense of leadership” and “learn the characteristics of a leader and how to handle things when they go wrong.”
Coach Smith said he hopes Coupeville will consistently have a summer team, but it is difficult to field a team each year because of Coupeville’s small enrollment. In the future, he said, Coupeville and South Whidbey most likely will combine to field both Legion AA and A teams (basically varsity and JV) to ensure that there are places for their players to compete and learn in the summer.
